Mac MAIL Cleanup?

[choreo]

I am still on Big Sur (getting ready to upgrade). The "Mail" folder in my Library takes up about 50GB and just wondering if there is any way I can reduce that file size without throwing any emails away. Looking at the contents of that folder it looks to me like there are either a lot of duplicate files OR it splits them up somehow? No idea how these mBox files are created.Is there a way to consolidate all these redundant named folders?

I am attaching a Screenshot of my Library - MAIL FOLDER:

Also, my email runs through a GoDaddy Linux cPanel (connected to my website). If I understand correctly the only emails on my server are my SENT emails. When I receive my daily emails in my INBOX, I either copy them to a client FOLDER inside my MAIL app (which I guess copies them off the server to one of the mBoxes in the screenshot below on my SSD) or I drag them to the trash. If this is the case, is there a way I can also have a copy of my "SENT" emails stored on my internal SSD as well (just in case)?

As it stands right now, if the GoDaddy server lost my email account (or I closed it), are my SENT emails all I would lose? (i.e. My local Mail app would still be able to access all my saved "received" files as they are in mBoxes in my computer?)

Thanks for any clarification!

 

[BrianBaughn]

It might help to post a generalized list of what active email accounts you have, how they're set up (Exchange, IMAP, POP) and, if you have emails stored under "On My Mac", how many emails are there.

 

[choreo]

It might help to post a generalized list of what active email accounts you have, how they're set up (Exchange, IMAP, POP) and, if you have emails stored under "On My Mac", how many emails are there.

 

[choreo]

I have only (2) IMAP Accounts (the second account is rarely used - maybe 2 or 3 outgoing emails per year)

All my Incoming Emails are stored in probably 100 folders under "On My Mac". When I receive an email from a client, they are dragged into a folder under "On My Mac" which has their name (and I have about 100 clients).

If I go to On My Mac>ALL MAILBOXES>Get Account Info, I see this pane:

The 4,605 number refers to the SENT messages stored on the server. It does not show me the thousands of stored emails in all my client folders from the past 25 years!

 

[BrianBaughn]

The ~/Library/Mail folder can get kind of messy looking over time depending on things like old accounts that are no longer accessed (or not even in the Internet Accounts list anymore).

Determining if any of those folders are unused or contain duplicate or unwanted data would be a very tricky procedure, I think. Perhaps those folders with POP in the filename are extraneous but it's impossible to know from what we've seen. How much data is in those?

It seems to me the best way to make sure you're using as little space as necessary would be to export your "On My Mac" email, verify that the export contains all the original emails, delete both IMAP email accounts, delete all the data in that ~/Library/Mail folder (to start from scratch), re-adding the two IMAP accounts, and re-importing all the exported "On My Mac" email.

As far as storing Sent mail…you could move that to a folder under "On My Mac" but as far as I know the only to see Sent mail properly listed in a folder (where the recipient is shown for each email instead of the sender) is to leave it in an actual Sent folder in an active email account.

 

[choreo]

What is the procedure to Export all the the On My Mac emails?