Can I delete old Mail drafts directly from ~/Library/Mail/V10?

Question

Can I delete old Mail drafts directly from ~/Library/Mail/V10?

Grand Perspective finds many copies of a large draft email in ~/Library/Mail/V10/xxx/Drafts.mbox/yyy/Data/ that were obviously generated during writing with large attachments already loaded. The email was written in Mail on an educational Microsoft Exchange account that doesn't sync very well. Drafts in Mail is empty, Drafts on the corresponding webmail as well. Search does not find these mails.

Can I delete the .emlx files directly from V10?

I'm still on Sequoia 15.7.2 on a Macbook Pro M1.

Thanks!

MacBook Pro (M1 Pro, 2021)

Posted on Dec 20, 2025 10:39 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 28, 2025 8:46 PM in response to schmunzelmonster

If all of your email accounts are either IMAP or Exchange, then the cleaner way may be to simply:

Remove the account from Mail: Remove or temporarily turn off email accounts in Mail on Mac - Apple Support
Reboot the Mac
Clean up and delete the drafts using Outlook online or other method
Add the account back to Mail: Add email accounts in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

This is always the tried and true way to resolve all sorts of email account issues in Apple Mail on either iOS or macOS. Attempting to resolve this in any other way may leave unseen issues behind in the old configuration.

Do not do this for accounts that use the old POP protocol unless you can confirm that the "leave on server" option was used in the past and the messages still exist online.

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Answer 2

Dec 29, 2025 7:38 AM in response to FishingAddict

Thanks, FishingAddict. I'll set aside some time to do that. My POP accounts are long gone so it's ok.

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Answer 3

Dec 29, 2025 7:13 PM in response to schmunzelmonster

Great. Not having POP accounts makes things so much easier nowadays because you know that your data is safe on the server. The challenge is making sure to clean up any problems using webmail directly on the server prior to adding the account back.

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