I cannot search sent emails in Gmail with Python
I am trying to search for messages in the Sent (actually i care for both) but I only get incoming messages. For the time being i have
imap_conn.select()
str_after = after.strftime('%d-%b-%Y')
typ, msg_ids = imap_conn.search('UTF-8','SINCE',str_after)
Which gives equivalent results with this
imap_conn.select('INBOX')
When I replace INBOX with ALL or SENT I get: command SEARCH illegal in state AUTH, only allowed in states SELECTED
Answer
Man, the error message is so misleading. What it's really saying is that you have tried to select an invalid folder name hence the search operation fails.
To verify/check the current valid folders/labels do something like:
Using ImapClient
from imapclient import IMAPClient
## Connect, login and select the INBOX
imap_conn = IMAPClient('imap.gmail.com', use_uid=True, ssl=ssl)
imap_conn.login(USERNAME, PASSWORD)
print(imap_conn.list_folders())
Using imaplib
import imaplib
mail = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com')
mail.login('[email protected]', 'mypassword')
print(mail.list())
After I could see what folder names it was expecting, all was well.