For years, I was deleting messages in Mac Mail POP thinking they would be erased from my local drive. However, I see that they did not erase from the drive and my mail file where all the emails are stored (user/Library/Mail/) is 40GB. To free up space, I would like to delete many unwanted emails (and attachments) from that folder. Viewing and deleting the unwanted emails one-by-one in Finder would take a lifetime. Hoping to use Mac Mail to more easily/quickly view, organize and group delete all these unwanted emails. Is there a way to view ALL of my emails in the user/Library/Mail/ folder in Mac Mail? Would re-importing the mail folder work? Or any other ways to achieve it? Thanks in advance!
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Mac Mail POP retaining deleted emails on local drive
- Thread starter Max Helix
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There's an old app I use to delete email on my ISP's server called "Mailbox Manager". You can find it here:
http://mac.brothersoft.com/mailbox-manager-download.html
It still works, even in Mojave.
It MIGHT work for you (no promises).
As you've found out, with POP (which I still use myself), when you "get your email", the mail "comes to you", but will still remain "on the server" unless you have Mail.app set up to delete it (when you download it).
One has to be aware of "what's on the server", and manage it there, as well.
I routinely delete email from the server so that it's "clean" everyday.
Again, MM -may- be able to list the emails on your server and you can "check them off" and erase them manually.
If you've gone years without doing this, it's going to take some time (perhaps days of effort) to clean up.
But... even a journey of a thousand miles...
http://mac.brothersoft.com/mailbox-manager-download.html
It still works, even in Mojave.
It MIGHT work for you (no promises).
As you've found out, with POP (which I still use myself), when you "get your email", the mail "comes to you", but will still remain "on the server" unless you have Mail.app set up to delete it (when you download it).
One has to be aware of "what's on the server", and manage it there, as well.
I routinely delete email from the server so that it's "clean" everyday.
Again, MM -may- be able to list the emails on your server and you can "check them off" and erase them manually.
If you've gone years without doing this, it's going to take some time (perhaps days of effort) to clean up.
But... even a journey of a thousand miles...