Help with NOT deleting mail

[Mike330R]

I'm having a weird issue with deleting emails. If I delete them from my iPhone 12 it does not delete them from my MBP or iPad Pro. I'm using a pop account (cox). MBP is set to pop. and iPad is set to imap.

If I delete from my iPad it deletes it from the MPB but not the iPhone.
If I delete from the MBP it does not delete from the iPad or iPhone.

On the iPad in settings - iCLoud Drive is on, iCLoud Mail is off.
Under Manage Account Storage there is no > next to mail allowing to to click into like I can with iCloud Photo's, etc etc.

I want to be able to delete from iPad but have it not delete from MBP.

What setting am I missing?

 

[Nermal]

The mix of POP and IMAP is likely causing confusion.

Your Mac is using POP. It will download the available messages and store them locally. Deleting a message will not affect the copy on the server.

Your iPad is using IMAP. This keeps the iPad in sync with the server. If you delete a message then it'll delete it from the server too. If that message has not yet been downloaded on the Mac then it won't show up on there, but if it's already been downloaded then it should remain showing.

If you don't want the iPad to "mirror" the Mac then it's probably best to change it to use POP too.

 

[Mike330R]

I can view both emails on the iPad and MBP, delete it from the iPad and watch it disappear from the MBP.

On the incoming server I tried changing imap.cox.net on the iPad to pop.cox.net (like it is on my MBP) and it gave an error: "Cannot Verify Server Identity".

 

[Nermal]

I can view both emails on the iPad and MBP, delete it from the iPad and watch it disappear from the MBP.

That's not what I'd expect. I'm going to step back a bit and wait for an expert to see this thread

 

[Mike330R]

Appreciate the try!

 

[NoBoMac]

Probably need to tweak ports.

Settings > Mail > Accounts > [Your Mail Account] > [Account] > Advanced >

Cox Email Server Settings

See the IMAP, POP, and SMTP settings used to send and receive Cox Email on your computer and mobile devices.

www.cox.com

But since Cox is going to Yahoo, might want to hold off mucking around too much at this time.

Your Email Account is ready to move to Yahoo

www.cox.com

 

[FreakinEurekan]

POP is the problem. Delete the account from the Mac and re-set it up as IMAP.

 

[Mike330R]

I made the switch from Cox to Yahoo which is imap.
Now, when I delete an email from the phone, it also deletes it from the MacBook Pro.
Is there some sort of "leave mail on server" setting on the phone. Or some other settings in the mail app on MacBook Pro?
I want to be able to delete mail from the phone, but not the MacBook Pro.

 

[NoBoMac]

You will need to check with Yahoo's help pages (or dig through settings on their site) to see if such a thing, but doubt it. IMAP is supposed to reflect across all devices. Or more precisely, as the Wikipedia page says:

IMAP was designed with the goal of permitting complete management of an email box by multiple email clients, therefore clients generally leave messages on the server until the user explicitly deletes them.

If there is no immediate delete from server option with Yahoo mail, can always fire up the Mac and move messages from Trash and put into a folder under "On My Mac" in Mail. Probably have 30 days before Yahoo trash gets flushed.

 

[Mike330R]

It seems to keep the emails if I move them manually to a mailbox 'on my Mac'.
I tried setting up a filter so any email that comes and moves it to a proper box on my Mac, but it doesn't seem to filter them.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I made the switch from Cox to Yahoo which is imap.
Now, when I delete an email from the phone, it also deletes it from the MacBook Pro.
Is there some sort of "leave mail on server" setting on the phone. Or some other settings in the mail app on MacBook Pro?
I want to be able to delete mail from the phone, but not the MacBook Pro.

No. The point of IMAP is all devices have all the info. Delete it once, it deletes everywhere.

 

[Mike330R]

Is there a way to change it to not delete from MBP?

 

[Fishrrman]

"Is there a way to change it to not delete from MBP?"

Remember that with IMAP, the actual body of the email remains ON THE SERVER, and NOT on your Mac (or phone, etc.). All you see is the message header on your local device.
When you click on the header to read the mail, I believe Mail "reaches out" to the ISP server and retrieves a copy of the body of the msg to read.
But I don't think this is retained "locally" after Mail is quit.

However...
You could do this...

Create a new mailbox in the "on my Mac" section of Mail on the MBP.
Call it whatever you like -- "archived mail" works for me.

For any email that you wish to KEEP, drag it into this mailbox.

When you do this, the email (body and all) in question is "moved" from its location on the server into your "archived" mailbox. It will stay there even if the Mac is shut down, rebooted, etc.

HOWEVER...
Remember that when you do this, the mail no longer exists on the ISP server, so that means THAT NONE OF YOUR OTHER DEVICES CAN SEE OR READ IT ANY MORE.
For all practical purposes, it has been "deleted" on the other devices.

The email in question now "exists" ONLY on the MBP.
(If I'm wrong about this assumption, will others please jump in and correct me)

This may be just what you want.
Whether it works for you or not, is up to you.

EDIT:

I see that NoBoMac mentioned that Cox is moving their email to Yahoo.
A lot of ISP's seem to be doing this.

I use Apple's Mail.app 99.9% of the time, rather than using a web-based interface to reach my ISP's mail server at Yahoo.

But I think that Yahoo (again, when you log directly into their email web page) has a built-in "archive" folder.

I'm thinking that for emails you want to keep around but NOT be visible in your regular "inbox", you could also log directly into Cox's yahoo email server and set it up that way.

Just a thought...

 

[Mike330R]

Moving the messages to 'on my Mac' does work. However, I wanted to delete the emails during the day from my phone while working and then come home to see them on my laptop.
I guess I'll have to wait to delete them from the phone.

 

[chown33]

Moving the messages to 'on my Mac' does work. However, I wanted to delete the emails during the day from my phone while working and then come home to see them on my laptop.
I guess I'll have to wait to delete them from the phone.

During the day, on your phone, you could move them to an intermediate folder (on the IMAP server). Later, you can move them on the Mac from the intermediate folder to the "On my Mac" folder, and they'd be gone from the phone.

You could call the intermediate folder something like "Styx".

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Is there a way to change it to not delete from MBP?

There’s always a way, I suppose. But frankly it’s a bad idea. Change your behavior, not the physics of email.

 

[NoBoMac]

Can also change the filters on iOS Mail to only show unread in Inbox, basically making them invisible/deleted.

But, yeah, agree with @FreakinEurekan, probably best to not fight the way IMAP works.

 

[gilby101]

Remember that with IMAP, the actual body of the email remains ON THE SERVER, and NOT on your Mac (or phone, etc.). All you see is the message header on your local device.
When you click on the header to read the mail, I believe Mail "reaches out" to the ISP server and retrieves a copy of the body of the msg to read.
But I don't think this is retained "locally" after Mail is quit.

No, no, that is not correct. With IMAP the client downloads the complete message (including embedded images) and stores it locally. And it is kept locally until deleted.

You may be confused with messages that included embedded links to images. In that case and depending on settings, the image may not be downloaded until the message is opened.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

@Fishrrman is correct, with macOS Sonoma Mail is "Optimized" so that messages contents are removed from the local machine until called upon, if they haven't been accessed in some period of time. For example, on my Mac - Mail is using 2.02GB of storage locally but 9.98GB on the server.

 

[gilby101]

macOS Sonoma Mail is "Optimized" so that messages contents are removed from the local machine until called upon

Can you give me a reference on this and how to configure it?

For example, on my Mac - Mail is using 2.02GB of storage locally but 9.98GB on the server.

Which folders are you including on your local storage?

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Can you give me a reference on this and how to configure it?

As far as I'm aware, "it just works" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It's been a feature of Mail for a few years now. I don't see any settings to control it - and I've never really looked for such settings, because it seems to work just fine for my purposes.

 

[gilby101]

It's been a feature of Mail for a few years now.

I'm not convinced. Also see my edit of the post just above about how you calculate local storage.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I'm not convinced. Also see my edit of the post just above about how you calculate local storage.

Well, it's what System Settings > General > Storage is showing for the Mail app. It's also the total size of the ~/Library/Mail folder.

I actually have two separate email accounts on the Mac, and the 9.98GB is just what Google is using. But iCloud doesn't have much mail in it - just 73MB.

Checking one of my other Macs, that one is using 2.09GB locally for the same accounts.

 

[gilby101]

Well, it's what System Settings > General > Storage is showing for the Mail app. It's also the total size of the ~/Library/Mail folder.

I actually have two separate email accounts on the Mac, and the 9.98GB is just what Google is using. But iCloud doesn't have much mail in it - just 73MB.

Checking one of my other Macs, that one is using 2.09GB locally for the same accounts.

1) From what I can see in Finder, that does seem to be the size of ~/Library/Mail.

2) You show the size of ~/Library/Mail. Note that though it is occupying 2.02 GB on disk, the size of all the items is 3.62 GB. The 3.62 is the more relevant value. There are other folders in ~Library with mail data, particularly in ~/Containers.

3) That does show a value for the space occupied by each folder in your google account. I don't know how Google computes the space occupied by mail, in particular how it accounts for space used by each label or category. I also don't know anything about the interaction between Apple Mail and Google for this display.

I agree there is a major difference between 2) and 3) on your Mac. 3.62GB against 9 GB.

Have you looked in gmail. At the bottom of the page it says how much space you are using on google. Follow the link to get to page that gives the breakdown of your google storage, like this:

My numbers are:

a) Google says I am using 1.78 GB for gmail.
b) Rough addition of Apple Mail Get Info is about 1.7 GB
b) Settings > Storage says 1.7GB on disk for all mail.
c) ~/Library/Mail says 1.7GB on disk for 2.5 GB data - for all mail.
d) Gmail under ~/Library/Mail says 1.1 GB on disk for 1.6 GB data.

Ignoring the "on disk" sizes and using the data size, the values for data storage are all similar 1.78, 1.7 and 1.6 GB.

I see no evidence (on my Mac) for only some messages being stored locally. And I can still find no other suggestion that Apple Mail works as you suggest.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Gmail says I'm using 9.28GB. Even if you assume the 3.62GB figure, that's still a lot less.

~/Library/Containers is around 9GB, but enough of that is "other stuff" that I'm confident the other 5.66GB of mail data isn't in there.

Perhaps Mail is treated like Messages in iCloud, in that attachments get removed from local storage (unless accessed) but plain messages don't? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ As a test, I sorted my Mail by "Attachments" and clicked on a message with a BUNCH of attachments from about 6 years ago, that I haven't read in 5 years (this computer is 2 years old, so it's never been looked at from this specific device). Took it a bit to come up, and all of the "Attachments" showed a "Downloading" icon before they displayed. And fwiw, the ~/Library/Mail folder is now 3.66GB after having done that