The "All my mail" mailbox of Mail.app has exploded. What to do ?

[michelangelo]

Hello !

After over 30 years on multiple generations of macs, My set of mailboxes containing, on my mac, more than 12 mailboxes have declared independence from the "all mail" single inbox gathering (formerly) all my incoming mail together with all my sent mail.

Now, I must check routinely a dozen of incoming mail mailboxes, multiple "sent mail" mailboxes, plus the unavoidable spam mailboxes (which problem was not reduced by the use of Spam Sieve). All "on my mac" and on separate imap synchronised mailboxes.

I have tried many avenues to fix this. No success so far:

1 - Complete OS reinstall. Did it. No change.

2 - Archive it all and restart. Not found archiving solution (the mac equivalent to windows' PST Bridge does not seem to exist);

3 - Redirect all incoming email (on all accounts) to a single mail box on my mac. I have not tried it yet, fearing it could increase my spam-related problems (and I generally do not use my iPhone for email);

4 - Route all my email through gmail (with the expectation it would also improve my spam-related issues). It worked on a gmail webmail account, collecting or receiving all the others, I could create a client account on Mail.App receiving all received email (reference was "How do I Route my Email through Gmail on "Ask Leo") but could not configure this mailbox to send mail. I failed on the SMTP server configuration on iCloud.

5 - I did not explore further the webmail types as I prefer mail clients (claris emailer 2 was my favorite).

6 - I did no check on the choice of using other mail clients.

All this on a reasonably modern macBook Air M1 (2020) on MACOS Monterey with multiple backup and an acceptable archiving solution (except for email).

I am probably not alone in this, and the solutions may be multiple. Any pointers or suggestions, or names of books for sale, or success stories will be warmly welcome. This is a single post, on macForums.

THanks in advance to all contributors. I will attempt to summarise, if useful.

 

[pm-r]

I am probably not alone in this, and the solutions may be multiple. Any pointers or suggestions, or names of books for sale, or success stories will be warmly welcome. This is a single post, on macForums.

I didn't notice any mention of you using Mail.app's "Rebuild" optional function which you might want to try considering its main function is to fix the exact problem you describe that seems to have messed up your Mail.app email.

Or did you do that and I didn't notice or missed reading that you did.

I would think it would be worth a try, especially considering nothing else seems to have worked.

It's certainly not the best time to mess up your 30 years of otherwise successful Mac experience.




- Patrick
=======

 

[michelangelo]

Thanks for the tip, Patrick. I was aware of the "rebuild" function and have tried to use it, but on the fringe only and not believing that it could fix this. I will reconsider and, try "rebuild" on each of my inboxes, and possibly other (like sent mail, spam.I will report by the end of the day.
Thanks

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Any pointers or suggestions, or names of books for sale, or success stories will be warmly welcome.

I'd offer my assistance, but frankly I'm not understanding your problem from your explanation of it.

If you want a guide to using Mail:

Mail User Guide (free)
https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/welcome/mac
https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/toc

Even more comprehensive is:
Take Control of Apple Mail ($15 e-book)
https://www.takecontrolbooks.com/apple-mail/

If you want the very best anti-spam program (much better than Mail's own built-in abilities), you are in luck, it is currently on sale at a fantastic price!

SpamSieve ($6, usually $30)
https://bundlehunt.com/bundle/2024-epic-utility-bundle/
https://c-command.com/spamsieve/

SpamSieve: Most Accurate Spam Filter for Mac

SpamSieve is an extremely accurate and easy to use Bayesian spam filter for Mac e-mail programs. Macworld’s “Software of the Year.” Download our free trial here.

c-command.com

If you want suggestions for alternate e-mail programs, or e-mail archiving programs, there is an entire Web site devoted to that:

Macintosh Email Software
http://www.macattorney.com/mail.html

 

[michelangelo]

Randy, thanks for your message. After spending part of the day trying to rebuildt mailboxes, I can better explain the issue I face.

Initially, the left pane of the "Mail" window contained:

(i) on the top portion my "favourites" like "Draft", "Incoming", "sent", smart boxes and other boxes containing in-sync emails.

(ii) in the middle portion "On my mac" containing emails ordered in mailboxes, no longer synced, organised with flippy triangles;

(iii) On the lowest part my real inboxes, imap, separated from each other and each with its accompanying set of ancillary boxes. (synced).

By exploded, I mean the inbox on the top, instead of containing the incoming mail for my 12-ish imap mail accounts is greyed out and does not contain any mail (neither the "received" email nor the "Sent" email the way macs do): Also, most mailboxes that I created for filing emails "on my mac" have moved to the tom, to "Favorites" and contain messages imap-synced with my still-imap emails of the top portion.

Some boxes contain up to 16000 messages (160 Mb) and take a lot of time to rebuild, in view of the fact they need to re-download all 16000+ messages as part of the rebuilding process.

I even found (and stopped) legacy mail actions still operatives auto-filing mailing lists (as ws done in the days of Claris Emailer), except that the auto-filing was done on the IMAP server, the auto-filed messages remaining in Sync after their silent filing (no auto-file log here to check on them as we should).

I expect this phase may take about a week.

The above describes what I need to do, with the intent, after rebuilding the databases, to remove over 99% of in-sync mail and store them "into my mac".

Question arising is: "How to separate synced mailboxes (by IMAP) from "on-my-mac" mailboxes (no longer in sync).

 

[michelangelo]

It took a week but it worked.

Credit for this turnaround is due to joe kissel's book; Thanks Randy for the suggestion.

Indeed,
I rebuilt many mailboxes and re-created the special mailboxes on the "Favorites" top portion.

Old archives should not be kept in sync to avoid the new download of all messages contained in the rebuilt mailboxes. I fixed a good part of that.

Gmail cannot be the main tool in a client-based environment like my macs. Gmail is essentially server-based and its indexing method is different from the one used by Apple (which is centered on the client).

My old pre-imap mail actions were cause for errors. I deleted them all.

I reduced from 14 to 4 the number of mailboxes, which simplifies everything, including, for Mail, the time it takes to perform all required authentication steps.

I will reduce the number of mailboxes and use more smart mailboxes (which are aliases).

When stabilized, I will resume using mail actions: initially server-side.

I will revert to the old habit of autofiling mailing-lists' emails on receipt and program a smart mailbox to work like an autofile log to allow me read them with some delay and mark them as read.

Thanks, again.