Apple Mail question.

[zowenso]

My wife rarely goes into her Apple mail on our Mac mini or even her user account on our Mac mini. She currently has 17,000 emails that have built up in apple mail on the Mac mini. If she deletes her account from apple mail on our Mac mini will that effect her apple mail on her iPhone?

Thanks.

 

[James_C]

If you just remove her mail account by going into mail settings then this will just remove her account from that computer, but leave her emails on Apple’s mail server, it will not impact her mails stored on her iPhone.

just remove her account, don’t delete the individual emails as this will sync back to the server.

 

[Apple_Robert]

If her mail account is a @me, @Mac, or iCloud account, you may need to prune her emails at some point, as that can build up space against your iCloud storage allotment.

 

[zowenso]

Thanks guys. Here’s why I ask. I have a mid 2010 Mac mini and I recently ordered a new 27” iMac. I’m wondering if those 17,000 emails are part of my time machine back up which will then make restoring the new iMac from my time machine back up take fooorrrever. Are those 17,000 factored into the amount of time it will take to restore the new iMac from my back up?

 

[brianmowrey]

Back to your OP, "removing" an account from Mail will not change anything at all that she currently sees in iPhone Mail app. That said, if you are not absolutely certain that every message she needs to refer back to is in the iPhone, you might want to take pause and look into the Mac Mail settings further. In Mail > Preferences > Accounts, do all of her accounts show as "IMAP"?

If so, "delete" accounts all you want (in recent Mac OS X versions, Mail will redirect you to Syspref>Internet accounts where you can uncheck Mail for the given account; and actual deletion of messages is not immediate; nor is there a documented process to force your drive to delete downloaded messages for accounts that you deactivate). Anything that was in your On My Mac folders will remain untouched by removing/deactivating an IMAP account.

If any accounts are dotmac, rather than IMAP, you are in for more parsing of what she needs to keep (and then exporting mailboxes to save whatever is valuable on the Mac Mail for the dotmac accounts).

Now to your followup:

Yes, everything that has already been downloaded that belongs to those 17k messages will be in her TM restore. But they shouldn't impact restore time enough to warrant investing time in creating a "fresh" restore that has her Mac Mail accounts removed, however. The best rule of thumb is to just let TM do it's thing, or don't use TM at all.

 

[Ruggy]

If I may add... It may well be useful for her to use the 'Archive' function found in the message menu.
This will archive your messages- as many or as few as you select-and store them on the mac separately.
They are saved with an .mbox extension.
You can copy these across and also back them up this way.
if you think they may be lost by deleting the account, then archive them first.
But I have another reason for telling you this.
17,000 mails is a lot and it is more likely you'll have mail problems handling huge amounts of emails like that.
I understand wanting to keep them just in case, but the trick is to archive nearly all of them and keep your mailboxes light.
You should also note their is a 'Rebuild' function in the 'Mailbox' menu and that re-oganises and re files the mailboxes which can also help them work more quickly and solve problems.
Best