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MarkR888 Author

Level 1

4 points

Apple e-mail deleting and restoring

I'm running Catalina on my MacBook Air and want to update to Big Sur, but I need to free up space on my hard drive. My drive is 250 GB and I'm using 230 GB. I checked the usage and found almost 40 GB is being used by my e-mail, even though I delete messages regularly and empty the Trash.

While looking for places to free space, I found I had 111,000 emails saved in the Archives folder. I thought these were copies of e-mails, so I deleted the Archives and then deleted the Trash. However, I have now lost almost all my e-mail, including all the e-mails I had sorted and stored in about a hundred separate folders.

All these e-mails still exist in the gmail on my iPhone, and all e-mails are in their correct folders on my iPhone, too. Also, my overall MacBook storage hasn't changed at all, showing I still have almost 40 GB of emails.

I have everything backed up on Time Machine, and I have 150 GB of storage space available on iCloud. How can I now restore all those e-mails back into their folders on my MacBook so I can start again more carefully? And when I've done that, and I want to delete older messages from those folders, how do I then delete those messages so that their removal frees up space on my MacBook hard drive?

MacBook Air

Posted on Oct 24, 2021 9:04 AM

Top-ranking reply

WESTCOASTHOPKINS

Level 2

459 points

Posted on Oct 24, 2021 10:33 AM

Hi, so I will not swear this will help, I suspect you have your Mail setup that instead of your mail being archived on the providers services, you have it setup that they are local to your devices. If you use Apple's Mail, try checking under Mail > Preferences > Accounts > AccountInQuestion > Mailbox Behaviours > Archive Mailbox (if it is on your Mac, that will be why you have the issue; change to be the archive folder for the service provider you use). Repeat for all your respective accounts.

Now, to restore those messages to the cloud, I believe you would be best to use your iPhone and under Settings > Mail > Accounts > AccountInQuestion > Service Provider Account (the registered one for whom you're with > Advanced > Mailbox Behaviours > Archive Mailbox > check if it is on your iPhone or On the Server > now decide where you want to move it to on the server to archive.

I hope this helps. Good that you have it though all available in Time Machine.

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Apple e-mail deleting and restoring

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