Mail does not remove messages from the server

Have you Emptied Trash?

Hello Walter.

Have you tried using the Rebuild Mailbox function on the Inbox mailbox for your IMAP account?

What kind of reply is "Have you emptied the trash?" Which trash are you referring to? The Finder Trash? it has nothing to do with Mail. If you are talking about the Trash in Mail, there is no option to Empty it that I can find in any menu. The Mailbox > Erase Delete Messages menu option does not seem to do anything either. And besides that, he already said he used his web mail to Purge the deleted files.

However, I have studied this problem for many months. It not actually a bug, per se, but it is annoying. In IMAP accounts, there generally is no trash folder. Webmails and Mail both default to Marking the Message as deleted. In a normal email client, like a web browser, this is conveyed to the user as a strike-through drawn through the message, but the message is still listed in the Inbox.

Here is Mail faults. Mail correctly marks the message as deleted but no longer shows it in any list. This leads the user to believe it has actually been removed when it has not. Which is why logging into webmail will reveal a whole bunch of messages that you thought you deleted but are now listed in your inbox but with a Strike-through.

IF Mail wants to use the IMAp standard, then it should continue to display the message with strike-through rather than just remove it from existence. There is a Menu item unter View > Show Deleted Messages But it doesn 't do anything.

So Yes, Walter, the work around right now is login to your webmail and purge the strike-through messages manually.

Mail should have an option to "Purge" as well, but alas, it does not. There is another work around. Do not use Mail. I used Mozilla Thunderbird for a long time and it handles IMAP accounts properly, unlike Mail. However, in the past few weeks, I personally have switched to my Webmail exclusively. The sad part is, I run the IT at a newspaper and get about 5 calls a day because people using Mail can't get mail because their mailboxes are full because Apple Mail and IMAP do not mix.

I've having the very same problem with Yahoo! Premium POP account. When I select "Erase Deleted Messages" it just empties the Trash inside Mail, but not on the server. Nothing is shown in Activity window either.

My problem is similar. I'm using an imap account. (OSX 10.4.2, Mail 2.0.3)

When the option "Store deleted messages on the server" is checked, I get a folder in the Mail Trash which contains the messages I've deleted from Mail. I also get a folder in the account folder list named "Trash" which holds the messages I've deleted at the office using any client at the office. The contents of each are not the same.

When the option "Store deleted messages on the server" is NOT checked, I get a folder in the Mail Trash which contains the messages I've deleted from Mail and a folder in the account folder list called "Deleted Messages" They have the same content. I also still get a folder in the account folder list named "Trash" which holds the messages I've deleted at the office using any client at the office. The contents of this folder as in my previous case is not the same. It appears that I have to have the "Store deleted messages on the server" NOT checked to have messages deleted by Mail appear on my server. Then when i get to work I have to move these messages from the "Deleted Messages" folder to the real "Trash" folder on server.

I don''t believe this problem has always existed and I suspect it was introduced in on of the major updates to Mail. I haven't always used mail but switced to it about a year ago from Entourage which worked correctly. I'd hate to have to go back to Microsoft.

Geoff