Is there a way to see Gmail All Mail label contents via IMAP if the user has the label's show in IMAP unchecked?

Question

I am using IMAP to connect to our Google Apps for Business domain. I am using XOAUTH2 to connect, and give me domain wide authority.

I am searching through All Mail to find old email that has not had a user label added to it, and is older than 2 weeks, in order to foster the deletion of unneeded email.

I have a python program that does the following:

conn.select('[Gmail]/All Mail') search_result, data = conn.uid('search', 'X-GM-RAW', my_search_string)

This is working well, however, I have discovered that if a user has gone into their gmail settings->labels and unchecked the "show in IMAP" box that corresponds to the [Gmail]/All Mail, I can no longer see it.

I get this message: BIBG3 NO [NONEXISTENT] Unknown Mailbox: [Gmail]/All Mail (now in authenticated state) (Failure)

Is there a way for me to see All Mail, regardless of whether they have the box checked or not? Or, is there another workaround?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

No, there isn't. This is the setting that controls whether the Folder is exposed in IMAP or not. If they have it unset, it cannot be used. It would be a security issue if it were otherwise. People may have it turned off for a variety of reasons.