Apple Mail with Gmail Account (IMAP): Moving Mails from inbox to folders fails

Solution 1:

The following solved the issue for me:

Gmail Settings:

• Inbox → Categories:
  Select only Primary
• Inbox → Importance markers:
  No marker
• Inbox → Filtered mail:
  Override filters
• Forwarding and POP/IMAP → IMAP Access:
  When I mark a message in IMAP as deleted: Auto-Expunge off
• When a message is marked as deleted and expunged from the last visible IMAP folder: Move the message to the Trash

Solution 2:

FYI, if anyone is still experiencing this issue it is due to Smart Folders.

If you drag an email from a Smart folder into another folder, the Gmail "Inbox" label is not removed and the new label for that folder is assigned. Oddly however, if you drag the same email from a normal folder into a folder it works. I suspect this is down to a bug in the Mac Mail logic where it assumes that because the mail is in a folder, the removal of the Inbox label is not required, but a smart folder is not a folder, it's only a view of a folder. Massive fail, and this issue has been like this for 1+ years.

Solution 3:

Got the same problem and getting insane. The only thing that helped so far was to log in to Gmail and there either click on "Archive" or simply remove the label "Inbox" from an email. Both actions remove the mail from the Inbox and thus also from the Inbox in Mail.app. The mail is then only kept in other folders (or better: labels as Gmail uses it) or "Archive" if no additional folder / label was added. However, there seems to be no way to remove the "Inbox" label from mails through Mail.app.