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开发者_运维知识库

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

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('myusername@gmail.com', 'mypassword')
print(mail.list())

After I could see what folder names it was expecting, all was well.

Make sure you use the extra quotes in your string:

imap_conn.select('"[Gmail]/Sent Mail"')  

That worked for me.

import imaplib
obj = imaplib.IMAP4_SSL('imap.gmail.com',993)
obj.login('userid','password')
obj.select('Sent')  # <-- response like ('OK', ['74']) --> total no. of mail in sent folder
obj.uid('SEARCH',None,'All') # <-- Returns the list of uids of the sent folder.

You need to use: imap_conn.select('[Gmail]/Sent Mail')

Just wanted to point this out for future users who see this. It's hidden in the comments.

Need to use print imap_conn.list(). Tags are language based. for example in spanish is [Gmail]/Todos