Mail always "Downloading" messages from Gmail

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Level 1

5 points

Mail always "Downloading" messages from Gmail

My Mac air continues to show "downloading messages" all the time in email when there aren't any messages to download? Once it finishes, it stops. But then the next day, or at some near-future time, it does it all again.

I've seen many discussions on it but cannot find a simple solution. Recently, I turned off the Archive mailbox thinking that would avoid that, but actually it made matters worse. When Archive was visible on the Mac, GMAIL only downloaded a few at a time. Now it appears to load an enormous number. Today it says it is downloading 28,000 messages, but on my GMAIL account, there are only 6,000 or so in the InBox, and "AllMail only shows 49, and Sent shows about 10,000.

(Interestingly, following instructions from another thread, I turned off Archive, and said Move to Trash. After that, the "All Mail" number shrank significantly.)

Honestly, even though I am tech savvy, at this point, I don't have a clue as to what I am supposed to do to have this Imap Gmail account work more normally. Why is it "downloading" 28,000?

Thanks.

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.12

Posted on Oct 28, 2019 11:18 AM

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Answer 1

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laura.r.p.d. Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 7, 2019 10:51 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks, and before I got a chance to do the recommended rebuild, I discovered the culprit... Gmail marks emails as "Important" and there is a setting to tell Gmail not to send those to Imap... the 18,000 emails were all labeled important by Gmail. I turned off send to imap, and then I marked them all as unimportant, and those emails no longer bother me.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

239,429 points

Oct 28, 2019 1:16 PM in response to laura.r.p.d.

Mac is confused on what it has.

Assuming all your Mail is IMAP & not POP, highlight Inbox, from Mail's Mailbox menu choose Rebuild after a safe boot.

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode?

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

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Answer 3

laura.r.p.d. Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 8, 2019 9:42 AM in response to BDAqua

They have an explanation on their website; but basically, it is also something you can turn off in the settings on the inbox, ie, don't mark things as important. Whatever their algorithm was, it resulted in 18,000 message!

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