IMAP: Leftover Drafts

Question

IMAP: Leftover Drafts

This happens often to me: I compose an email, might save it as a draft inbetween - and after I send it, the whole mail or the part of it that I saved remains in my Drafts box. So I don't know if I really sent it until I find it in my Sent box, which assures my that I did send it. Some uncertainty remains, though.

The draft should vanish when the mail has been sent, shouldn't it? My mail accounts are of the IMAP variety.

Posted on Oct 6, 2005 11:52 AM

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Answer 1

icerabbit

Level 3

785 points

Dec 7, 2005 10:28 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

This started happening to me with my .mac email, where Mail keeps copies of automatic generated / saved drafts in the drafts folder and does not release / delete those drafts after the email is actually sent.

So, I am trying to find a cause and/or solution.
Btw: nothing changed to my preferences and account settings. In the past it would remove drafts automatically after sending.

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Answer 2

Dec 7, 2005 10:30 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

Have you selected save Drafts on the server for your IMAP account preferences in Mail?

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Answer 3

icerabbit

Level 3

785 points

Dec 7, 2005 10:37 AM in response to Allan Sampson

That was really quick Allan!

Yes, that option was checkmarked.
Wouldn't be something I opted for so must have overlooked it. But then, it never acted up before where emails remained in the drafts box after sending.

Anyway, I removed the checkmark, so I'll have to see what happens now.

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Answer 4

Kaj Hejer

Level 2

310 points

Dec 13, 2005 5:24 AM in response to icerabbit

Hi!

Did this solve your problem?

From what I can see this is a bug i Mail.

Agree?

Storing the drafts localy instead of on the imap server is just a workaround.

-Kaj 🙂

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Answer 5

Dec 20, 2005 8:24 AM in response to Kaj Hejer

This happens to me too on my .Mac account. The drafts come back again and again. At first I was resending the message over and over thinking it had not gone, but now I know to delete the drafts.

I have now turned off the 'drafts on server' option, so I hope this will fix my problem. This is a bug in Mail.app.

Sky

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Answer 6

Feb 15, 2006 10:43 PM in response to SkyApperley

Can confirm this has been happening to me for some time (at least 1 yr)...

I'm not willing to only have my drafts local on this machine - so that fix wont work for me.

Anyway of having mail check all my mailboxes for errors etc?

Thanks, jules.

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Answer 7

Feb 25, 2006 2:36 PM in response to Allan Sampson

Allan,

Okay, I am going to try your suggestion and see what occurs.

Has it worked for anyone?

Barbara

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Answer 8

kerrywm

Level 1

9 points

May 2, 2006 6:15 AM in response to Christoph Drösser

This is happening to me also. If I drag the draft to Trash, it frequently shows back up. If I right click to delete, it usually doesn't. Strange.

iMac G5 PowerPC 20in iSight 2.1 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

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Answer 9

Jun 8, 2006 4:06 AM in response to kerrywm

Wouldn't this be one way of maintaining your repeated/needed drafts? By having them remain in the draft box after being sent out? Another post stated that they wanted to have their drafts remain for reuse. Does this allow for the reuse of the draft message?

Cletus

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