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For the past month, I have been unable to empty my e-mail trash when I've logged onto my mac.com account. I previously had no problems in doing so, and wonder if this is the result of having upgraded to Mac OS Big Sur (11.5.2) about a month ago?
Hey there Willingtolearn,
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. We understand that you're having some issues deleting emails. We're happy to provide some assistance.
Let's follow the steps under the "Permanently delete emails" section here:
If the issue persists, please let us know what happens when you try to delete emails. Also, let us know if this occurs with all mail accounts you might have or specific accounts.
We hope this helps.
Have a great day!
Hey there Willingtolearn,
Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. We understand that you're having some issues deleting emails. We're happy to provide some assistance.
Let's follow the steps under the "Permanently delete emails" section here:
If the issue persists, please let us know what happens when you try to delete emails. Also, let us know if this occurs with all mail accounts you might have or specific accounts.
We hope this helps.
Have a great day!
Thank you for the reply Willingtolearn!
If you're attempting to delete your iCloud mail through a browser, look here:
Delete email in Mail on iCloud.com
If the issue persists after following those steps, please let us know what happens when you try to delete mail and if you're seeing any error messages.
Cheers!
Yes VazWaz, I have only accessed my mac.com e-mail account through my web browser (while using my newest (2018) powerbook) as I haven't wanted to fill up my hard drive with all of my older e-mails (by using the built-in mail app). I used to be able to delete my unwanted e-mails until about a month ago - around the time that I upgraded to the newest Mac OS Big Sur 11.5.2. This "upgrade" also caused unwanted troubles for me with my scanner (as my powerbook refused to recognize me as the administrator of my own computer and denied me "permission" to access my scanner). I've got that problem fixed, but would sure like to permanently delete all of the e-mails I've moved to my trash during this past month. Thanks for recognizing that we have the same problem while entering our e-mail accounts through our web browsers. I should have mentioned that in my original post.
What I am doing to circumvent the problem is to create a folder for temporary use, and then move all the emails from trash to this temporary folder and then delete this temporary folder which will also delete all the emails inside it.
Thank you Rob_H1. I followed your link to your suggested solution and realized that this would be a solution for me if I was having problems deleting unwanted e-mails while using my mail app to access my e-mail account. However, I've only been accessing my mac.com e-mail account through my web browser since purchasing my latest powerbook in 2018. Do you have any other tricks up your sleeve for this situation (i.e., emptying my e-mail trash while accessing my e-mail account through a web browser). By the way, I usually only use my Firefox web browser to access the Internet. I will try getting into my e-mail account through Safari and Chrome to see if they help with this situation. Since I still don't own a cell phone, all of the recent upgrades have seemed unnecessary for my needs and equipment.
Thanks again Rob_H1. I must have been typing my last reply to you when you were sending me your second solution set (after recognizing that I was using my browser to access my e-mail account). I've regularly gone to the sidebar and clicked on the "empty trash" command to manually delete my unwanted e-mails when their number and file sizes were unnecessarily large. However, since upgrading to Big Sur 11.5.2, whenever I try to do this, I get a dialog box that says, "Cannot empty folder. This folder cannot be emptied at this time. Try again later." I haven't previously noticed that my e-mails were ever "automatically deleted" after sitting in the trash for 30 days, as I've never let them sit there for that long. However, at this point (Aug 23rd), I now have a large number of months old e-mails that I cannot manually delete, or empty from my trash, and I am trying to keep my stored icloud data under the maximum limits. Perhaps I will have to use VazWaz's suggested solution (i.e., moving my trash contents to a temporary folder - and then deleting that folder) to keep my account within the 5 Gb icloud storage limit? Thank you again for your input and suggestions.
That is the exact same error that I am getting. I even created a new appleid and associated new email account and the problem still existed on that new account so it is not account specific for me.
I also tried on my iPad (using Safari) and the problem was there also, so I don't think it is caused by your upgrade to Big Sur.
I have also tried different browsers, different IP address (by rebooting my router) and still the same problem.
I was also able to empty trash by using the Mail app which I guess means the problem is not with the mail servers but with the iCloud infrastructure itself.
If I get a useful reply from Apple Support regarding this problem I will post it here.
Is this using iCloud mail through the web browser ?
If it is I have the same issue and have raised it with Apple support about a week ago and so far no resolution.
unable to empty e-mail trash
