How to remove a label from an email message from Gmail by using the IMAP protocol?

Question

On Gmail adding labels works just fine:

imap.store(item, '+X-GM-LABELS', label)
imap.expunge()

But:

imap.store(item, '-X-GM-LABELS', label)
imap.expunge()

...which is supposed to remove the label will just do nothing, without returning an error ('OK').

What is the proper way to remove the label?

Corrincorrina

Answer 1

Years later, but for anyone landing here from Google, I ran into a similar (or identical) issue to the OP.

TL;DR: search by X-GM-LABELS instead of using imap.select(label)

---

The concise way to remove a label (as pointed out by Changneng) is:

imap.store(item, '-X-GM-LABELS', label)

However, since Gmail treats labels and folders somewhat interchangeably, but doesn't include the label on the copy of the message in a label's folder, the above won't work if you fetched the message using:

imap.select(label)
ok, data = imap.search(None, "ALL")

...

imap.fetch(item, "(RFC822)")
imap.store(item, '-X-GM-LABELS', label) # <-- Effectively a no-op

Using -X-GM-LABELS to remove the label won't work in that case, since the label isn't actually attached to the copy placed in that folder. Instead, you'll have to look up the copy of the email that's in the inbox (or presumably any other folder), and remove it from that id. For most intents and purposes, this method of loading messages should serve as a replacement for selecting the label's folder:

imap.select('inbox')
ok, data = imap.search(None, 'X-GM-LABELS', label)

...

imap.fetch(item, "RFC822")
imap.store(item, '-X-GM-LABELS', label) # <-- Will now remove the label!

The copy in the inbox folder will have all custom labels attached, and removing the label from that id (item) will remove the label, and remove the message from the label's folder in one shot.

Also, just a note, the above code will fail if your label has a space in it, in that case it needs to be wrapped in quotes, e.g. replace label with f'"{label}"'.

Cryptography

Answer 2

Gmail threat their labels as IMAP folders when you look on it by IMAP: https://support.google.com/mail/answer/77657?hl=en

As you are speaking about Gmail IMAP extensions - https://developers.google.com/gmail/imap_extensions#access_to_gmail_labels_x-gm-labels its doc say it may be used for add labels, store and search. I suppose it is just convenient way to work with it via standard IMAP protocol to do not search letter in all folders where it may be. So if you want delete some label just remove message from this folder in terms of IMAP.

Heymann

Answer 3

As tested, Gmail supports the following syntax to remove a label

imap.store(item, '-X-GM-LABELS', label)

No expunge statement needed.

Ly