First off, I love Peek, so even though this is a long post, it is not a rant, because I am writing it with a happy face. Consider this simply a description of a problem I had using Peek and Gmail, and a workaround I am using to keep using Gmail and Peek after a recent service change.

Please note... My only reason for posting this is in case it can be helpful for someone else facing a similar issue, and my hope is that it will allow such folks to keep using their Peek and their Gmail.

The disclaimer: I am not an employee of Peek or of Gmail, so please consider this a use-at-your-own-risk guide, and I do not guarantee it to work in all cases or without error. I do suggest reading all of the steps first before actually performing any steps, just to make sure that you think all of the steps will work for you and that you know how to do them without getting stuck halfway through. This means use the following info at your own risk, and sorry, I don't provide tech support. It is what it is, though I hope it's nothing except helpful to all.

The history:

Gmail lets you set up "filters" to move your mail from your Inbox into an archive. Setting up a filter rule with "Skip Inbox" lets you decide which messages you want to keep in your Inbox or not. Your filter rules can also leave the message as unread, or mark it as read. So in Gmail, it is possible to have a message that is both archived and unread.

One reason to use such a filtering rule is if you consider the filtered mail to be less important, and you'd prefer not to see such email. To people who filter for this reason, it was annoying to see these messages on their Peek. They're trying to use Gmail filters to weed out mail and would prefer that Peek only downloaded unread messages still in the Inbox.

Another reason to use such a filtering rule is if you consider the filtered mail to be more important, and you'd prefer to organize such email using labels or other techniques in Gmail. In this manner, organized email that skips the Inbox is of higher priority, and the Inbox is just those few remaining emails that don't fit any filter criteria.

Personally, I fit in the second criteria. I had one filter set up to skip the inbox and label it "Personal" if it was sent straight to my email address. I also used Gmail's POP and IMAP to check other accounts, so I had separate filters set up to move these to other labels as well. Sure, I didn't have to have them "Skip Inbox", but it saved me the step of having to archive or clean up my mail later, as well as gave me the benefit of knowing anything in my Inbox was uncategorized and could be treated as such.

The change:

Peek recently changed the service so that now the Peek service only downloads unread mail in my Inbox to my Peek device. This means the majority of my mail, which is filtered by Gmail, is unreadable to me on my Peek device. Only those stray mail still in my Inbox -- and that is generally mail from people mailing me for the first time, or from people that I get mail from so infrequently that I have not bothered to add them to the filter, or it is spam. NOTE: While this change inconvenienced me, I'm sure it made LOTS of other Peek users happy by not delivering mail they'd just delete from their Peek anyway.

The manual workaround (for people with few filters):

The brute-force workaround is to manually adjust all your filters to uncheck the "Skip Inbox" part of the filter. If you only have one or two filters, this is probably no big deal to you. If you have lots of filters, this can take a LOT of time. Also, looking forward with a hopeful attitude, if Peek ever adjusts their service to give folks the option of having the service download unread messages that are not in the Inbox, I was looking for a better solution so that I could go back once the service was adjusted.

The more-detailed-to-describe, but faster-to-perform workaround (for people with so many filters the thought of editing them makes them very sad):

Gmail Labs now has an "Filter Import/Export" feature. If you don't know what Gmail Labs is, check out their blog posting announcing the Labs feature here ( http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/introducing-gmail-labs.html ). Once you're using Gmail Labs, when you click the Settings tab in Gmail, you'll have an extra tab called "Labs". Scroll down to the "Filter Import/Export" and make sure you click "Enable" and then scroll down all the way to the bottom and be sure to click "Save Changes".

Now when you go back to the Settings and go to the Filters tab, you have additional options. At Select, click All to select all the filters, then click Export. When I did this, it let me save a file called mailFilters.xml which I saved to my Desktop. Once downloaded, make a copy of it so you have a backup. Then open mailFilters.xml in Notepad and do a search and replace, searching for

<apps:property name='shouldArchive' value='true'/>

and replacing it with nothing, just an empty text box. Do a Replace All, and after the search/replace finishes, save the file.

Back in Gmail at the Filters tab in Settings, do the Select All again and this time click Delete. This will kill all your filters. It will tell you as it deletes each one and if it has problems deleting any.

Assuming your filters are all gone from Gmail, it's time to re-import your modified filters... just click the link "Import Filters" then the button "Choose File" and select your newly-modified mailFilters.xml file, then click "Open File".

A list of filters will appear. You might assume that all your modified filters have been imported... they have not. Make sure all your filters are checked (Select All is your friend again if they are not all automatically checked)... and scroll down and click "Create filters". Much like with the filter deletion, Gmail puts up a box on the page to keep you informed of filter progress and any errors.

With that done, you should now have all your filters back, but without any "Skip Inbox" functionality, so all your messages should go to your Peek. And if Peek ever decides to adjust things to give us the option of going back to being able to read unread messages in our Gmail archive, then make sure to hang on to that copy you made of the mailFilters.xml file. Just delete out your existing filters (assuming you haven't made any more manual changes that you want to re-export and keep) and then re-import your original filters from your mailFilters.xml file. Similarly, if somewhere during this process, you find out you can't import your adjusted filter file and you need to start over or go back to the way things were, you might be able to re-import the original file nevertheless, or in worst case, use it as a reference if you ever have to manually recreate your filters sometime down the road.

Good luck all!

Jeff