Mail, GMail and the dreaded archive (all mail) folder.
I recently moved my email account to Gmail. (Long story - I didn't want to, but Apple iCloud mail didn't seem to want me)
So now I have this 'Archive' folder on all my Macs and iOS devices, although the folder appears to be called "All Mail" on the iOS devices. How do I get rid of this?
My issue with it is as follows:
These folders appear to have copies of all mail sent or received from that particular email account. If I delete an email from my "Inbox" or "Sent" box, it also gets removed from the "Archive". If I delete an email from the "Archive", it also gets deleted from the "Inbox" or "Sent" box, as the case may be. This isn't illogical, but it unnecessarily duplicates the "Inbox" and "Sent" boxes.
However, the goofy part comes when you move emails from the "Inbox" or "Sent" box to "another" folder. When I move emails in this way, they disappear from the "Inbox" or "Sent" box as the case may be, but not from the "Archive". After doing this, deleting emails from the "other" folder doesn't delete them from the "Archive" or vice versa.
So, at any time, there may be some emails in the "Archive" that are also in the "Inbox" or "Sent" box as the case may be and some that are also in the "other" folder. Those in the "other" folder are unnecessary duplicates, take up two lots of space, and aren't wanted. Unfortunately, unless I go through all the emails in the "Archive" before deleting any, I may inadvertently delete emails that are in the "Inbox" or "Sent" box, which aren't duplicates and therefore also get deleted from the "Inbox" or "Sent" box.
As you can imagine, it creates a significant amount of work, manually checking whether each email is also in the other folder, Inbox or Sent box, before deciding to delete them.
iMac 24″, macOS 12.1