Mail stuck on 'Saving Drafts'

I went to Mailbox Behaviours in Accounts in Preferences on all of my 4 mailboxes and switched the "Draft Mailbox" choice on each to the "Drafts" folder in "On My Mac" option (i.e. NOT the iCloud option).

The good news is that the "Saving drafts" doom loop appears to have been eliminated. Thank you and others who find this page in the future should definitely try the above route first to eliminate the "Saving Drafts" fault.

However, it is worth noting that the mailbox layout it now defaults to involves showing individual mailboxes separately under On My Mac, not in it. See pic below;

Each of the 4 mailboxes under On My Mac can be closed with the "hide" command, I have pictured them all open so you can see which 3 folders are inside (the last one is a non-Apple box).

For now, this seems to have fixed the problem and I am very grateful. Given how many people have reported the Saving Drafts problem, it is disappointing that Apple have not changed their default Mail settings for Drafts in Mojave so this problem does not arise.

Thank you.

Hi Dennis, Apple has hidden our Users' Libraries from us...

Temporary access to the hidden User Library

Method 1:

From the Finder, select the Go menu at top of the screen, and choose Go to Folder.

In the window that opens, enter ~/Library, and click Go.

Method 2:

Go to the Finder (or desktop).

Hold the Option key on your keyboard, and click the Go menu at the top of the screen.

With the Go menu open, you'll notice that pressing and releasing Option will display or hide the Library choice in this menu.

Select Library from the Go menu (while holding down Option) to access the hidden folder.

OK, in Mail>Mailbox menu item>New Mailbox>On My Mac, Name it Drafts, then point your drafts to that Draft Folder.

Dennis, In Mail choose Mailbox>New Mailbox...>On My Mac and name it Drafts, then redirect all your Drafts to that box... may have to quit & restart Mail.

The V folder are where most of your Mail doings are kept, the number after the V will depend on what OS version you're running. Deleting stuff there we have to be careful.

I doubt Apple is going to fix it since it's not a common problem, we must fix whatever is abnormal.

I can not say “thank you” enough!

This had been going on with me for over a year. It caused my mail to run so slowly, I just had to stop accessing mail on my Mac altogether, and use either my iPad, or iPhone.

What a DIFFERENCE!

Thank you!!!!

Problem solved. It was down to my Yahoo mail account. Apple help on phone talked me through a process (that seemed to be like closing account then reopening new account with same ID) sorry I cant be more specific. Nearly two thousand emails came into the computer once fix completed! I have now caught up with clearing out the rubbish.

Thank you very much Bruno at Apple help......you put your finger on the problem very quickly. Computer to Yahoo server confusion.

Den

That is what I meant, yes.

No, all drafts would go into 1 box, if you wanted them separate then make 3 more boxes On My Mac...

Drafts2

Drafts3

Drafts4

Hmmm, Drafts doesn't show in On My Mac either on the Sidebar, but is a choice in prefs, have you chosen that & restarted Mail?

OK, good luck over there, in 10.12.6 the Draft Boxes are stored in hellacious ways...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/V4/3569E375-1564-40EF-8A80-43A0E836FBBC/[Gmail].mbox/Drafts.mbox

I can't make your tip work sadly. I'm running Mojave on a late-2018 MBP and I have the "Saving 1 of 71 Drafts" message constantly in the bottom left corner of Mail, even though I don't have 150 drafts. I do create e-mails with large attachments regularly so maybe that is the cause.

Elsewhere an alternative solution to the problem was posted that involved changing the settings in Mailbox Behaviours so that Drafts were only saved on the Mac, not in the Cloud. I haven't found a way to make that work either....

Confusingly, there is already an On My Mac folder in my Drafts folder, although there's nothing in it.

But there isn't a Drafts folder in my On My Mac folder. That On My Mac folder has various Recovered Messages folders for my active mailboxes and has one other folder where I store some old E-Mails.

Why would creating a new Drafts folder there help the problem...?

I operate 4 mail accounts, the screenshot shows there is a 5th folder inside Drafts entitled "On My Mac". It's empty and to my knowledge has never had anything in it.

In the separate On My Mac folder lower down, there is no "Drafts" folder inside. The Import folder contains only some old e-mails I manually carried over that I need for reference. The Notes folder is empty (and always was, I think) and the rest is 5 folders of Recovered Messages, 4 for the mail accounts and another empty one for "On My Mac".

So no Drafts folder in On My Mac....

And I still have the "Saving 1 of 71 Drafts" message in the bottom left....

When you say "point your drafts to that Draft folder", I presume you mean change the choice of Draft folder in Mail>Preferences>Accounts>Mailbox Behaviours...?

When I looked at that setting a moment ago, I saw that there is an option to choose the "Drafts" folder in On My Mac in Mailbox Behaviours, in all 4 mailboxes. I haven't created those Drafts folders, they must have been in there all along, but hidden.

So if I change in Mailbox Behaviour the choice of Draft for each of my 4 boxes to the Drafts folder in On My Mac, will my existing drafts re-appear in 4 new Drafts boxes in On My Mac...?

MacBook Air (2014) with updated OS Mojave 10.14.3

Oh dear....same problem here and tried to follow above cure but it did not work. Still saving 527 of 1,052 drafts 7.67 GB.

"On my Mac" does not show a Drafts folder.....but when I try to create one it says "cannot create already exists"

clicking on Mail>Preferences>Accounts>Mailbox Behaviours ...each of my 3 accounts (icloud, Yahoo, Btinternet) when drafts is selected shows that you can select .....Draft....Drafts......or On MY Mac (subfolder) Drafts.

I have selected On My Mac...Drafts for each of the 3 accounts

But still the problem exists and still the On MY Mac does not show Drafts under it (just Deleted messages and recovered messages folders.

Somewhere someone else says cured by another process (but think this was in a different OS) by doing something in "Library/Mail/V5......../......../Data/5/2/messages

That process was beyond my comprehension as I do not have a clue how to get to the "Library" referred to and just could not follow the listed steps they used......"Find your Drafts folder in your home directory" HOW??

The following instructions may make sense if I can get over the first hurdle?

Somewhere else has an instruction to go to Finder and go to path Library by holding Option/Alt key while clicking "GO" in upper menu bar...........I can see no "GO".........so yet again getting nowhere.

Would someone out there please please give a way of curing the problem on my MacBook Air OS Mujave using the simplest of terminology that can be followed assuming a novice is following. Please no "go to" without saying how.

Perhaps it would help if someone could explain (in simpler terms) what is happening and why. Where all these ""Drafts"" are.....why they are being transferred/saved and from where to where.

My problem also only started recently (few days/week or so ago)....was it after an update to Mojave??

Terribly frustrated

Dennis

WD and BDAqua. thanks for help so far. The fog is gradually clearing.....I can see 6 foot now instead of 3 inches!

Unfortunately age is not on my side as now my memory cells virtually cease to function and it is taking me longer to understand and grasp concepts. I have had to print out the various helpful suggestions from various people (therein lies another saga...printing out!!)

I accessed Mail..........Mailbox Behaviours and for the 3 accounts selected where drafts stored to "MY Mac subfolder Drafts."

Closed down MAIL immediately to allow changes to implement (as advised). Re-opened MAIL app and STILL get "saving 1 of 526 Drafts 3.84GB. This has stayed the same for about 1 hour or so (previously when saving X of thousands of drafts, the X gradually counted up........last memory of it was around 17 of a thousand or so.

So no cure yet.

Back to the drawing board? Is the fact that I am on Mojave 10.14.3 rather than High Sierra .....which is what this conversation is listed under of any significance?

I still do not understand what is in the Library/Mail/V?........I had a V2 and a V6 folder with some files(?) with labels that were meaningless. I wonder if I should have deleted them all? I do not like deleting files/folders that I do not understand what they are.

Dennis