Trouble with large mail volume on new M1 Mac

[James O.]

I am setting up my new 16 inch MacBook Pro and finding that mail has just stopped loading in from iCloud. There's a ton of old mail, ten years worth so 20k plus messages on two accounts. I'd like to keep it all, any suggestions for unclogging the pipe? I just get the pinwheel and activity makes it look like nothing is happening. As I try to take accounts offline to let the other one work, it doesn't seem to help.

James

 

[Lioness~]

Let it run over the night. Give it time. Leave it with the bath ball, and go to sleep.
Trust your new shiny Mac 😊

 

[James O.]

allll righty then. I will let it go and hopefully it punches through.

 

[Lioness~]

Anything good happened?

If not, solution Option+Command+Escape / force quit the app.
And try another solution that demands lighter workload.
Maybe take it in steps. But a new M-chip MacBook Pro should handle it, in my expectation.

 

[James O.]

It just stayed frozen overnight. Today I restarted, quit and restarted a number of times and everything eventually downloaded. But one of the accounts locks everything up as it tries to download 28 messages. Every time it checks for email. I am experimenting with turning off the option to download attachments etc. It's messed up. I don't know if doing a rebuild on the mailbox will help. Any ideas? This just happens when it goes to check for messages that it just gets stuck on 'checking'

Also, when I check the battery mail shows up as 'using significant energy' all the time.

 

[satcomer]

Then open Mail on your Mac and go to the Mail menu item 'Window' then sub mini 'Connection Doctor'! inside the 'connection doctor you can see where your settings are messing up with the email sever setup by clicking ' 'Show Details' to see the printout of the connection protocol! This way you about that server settings!

 

[James O.]

The connection doctor shows successful connections to my two clouds, one for imap and one for smpt for each account. It doesn't seem to be showing any problems?

 

[Lioness~]

Do you need to have all mail on the computer?
I leave the mailboxes on iCloud, they come up in Mail just fine in all various devices.
But I don't have as old and as many mails saved as you though.
Maybe create archives of the oldest?

Can take some time to get various mail accounts and setting to work ok with new Mac, yuk.
Check Internet account in Settings, not in mail settings, and there it might be something with passwords etc.
I can't guide you with it, I know I had some messed up with own domain mail accounts that took me awhile to get right in those settings.

 

[James O.]

I really don't need to have all of that on the machine. I am doing an archive now of the larger email account. What is strange though, is that it's the smaller account with a lot fewer messages that seems to be creating the problem. How do you leave the email on iCloud and not have it local? Is there a setting to toggle that?

 

[Lioness~]

How do you leave the email on iCloud and not have it local? Is there a setting to toggle that?

Create new Mailboxes from meny mailbox, new mailbox in the drop down, chose iCloud, and not on my Mac.
Then I move mails from the inbox after I’m done with/read them for the moment to chosen mailbox.
Which are a available on Mail on all devices.
Have to get better to move/delete mails from inbox though. But it’s much better now after latest mail reorganization.

 

[James O.]

Ok, looks like the crisis is over. I tried doing some archiving and then I turned off mail in iCloud and then turned it back on again. Mail is no longer hogging power or getting stuck. Thank you for your help!