how do I delete messages in archives? I tried marking several thousand to delete, but it crashed my mail program and made me restart my computer. I also logged into Google/gmail and tried there but that doesnt' show archives, so deleting trash there just added to my archived messages in Mail program. I have over 345K in archives.
MacBook Pro 13", macOS 10.13
Hi Shari, try this, Search for archived gmail, check the box to the left of Archive, choose Delete...
Thank you so much for your reply! I have tried everything, used your graphic to delete some in my browser, but I may need to make an appointment at the genius bar, or call Apple. I may have a bigger problem. Mail program has always been a bit fickle. I’m trying to delete archived messages In my Mail program on my Mac, going back to 2012. Trying to free up storage space as I’m getting messages daily now that I need to do this. I have some large programs on my computer so don’t have much choice but to clean up some files. Mail shows 15 gigs of storage used on my Mac.
In my Mail program I went thru all my archives and deleted 2011 to this summer. Over 200K messages. It crashed Mail and wouldn't let me reopen it with errors until I restarted my computer. Then all the mail showed back up so I went thru and deleted them again. Now there are only 194K messages in Archives. No matter how or where I delete them, when I restart the program or computer they all show back up.
If I go to Gmail on my browser, I see 156K messages in my personal email account and I can delete 25 at a time. That will take me hours.
Why do I even have archives? I see settings for trash, to delete after so many days. I have 4 email accounts I use daily.
Well, in truth, gMail never deletes anything, nor does it ever move anything, it just tags them differently, like this eMail is Archived, this eMail is Deleted, & so on.
To really gain space on your internal drive you can relocate your Music, pics, or even your whole Home folder to an external drive...
https://www.cnet.com/news/how-to-move-a-home-folder-in-os-x/
PS. if your short of space it may crash the Mac or even trash the drive, it can require upto 3 times the free space as the items you're deleting!
Oh gosh, thank you so much for your time and answers! A crash would be no good. I will get in touch with Apple to figure out how to solve this. I really don't want to move my folder to an external drive... I do use Parallels which takes up a lot of storage. But I should be able to permanently delete old emails from years ago. I've checked all folders, don't have any files in music or photos, they are all in icloud.
If gMail log into the WebMail server, look for Manage Labels near the bottom left, then Forwarding and POP/IMAP across the top, then look at the POP & IMAP options.
how do I delete messages in archives?
