Thousands of Deleted Emails Return to the Mail App - Please help me Delete them for good!

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Level 1

13 points

Thousands of Deleted Emails Return to the Mail App - Please help me Delete them for good!

Tens of thousands of Deleted emails return to Mail - HELP! Why cannot I get rid of old mail?

I have researched every possible solution and have found many, many questions regarding this over the years and threads that I feel have been prematurely closed.

I have an M2 MacBook, MacOS Tahoe 26.5.2, and Mail Version 16.0. I have both Yahoo email addresses and Gmail. I spend hours and hours deleting emails in bulk or individually, and make sure that every recommended setting is selected and that the Mailbox Erases Deleted Items. "Mailbox Behaviors" are set to Erase junk messages: When quitting Mail and Erase deleted messages" When quitting Mail. And all are put in the Trash.

What happens?

Tens of thousands of deleted emails download back into my Mail app - after spending hours deleting them. Sometimes they move back to the Inbox before I can click "Mailbox Erase Deleted Items". Days deleting emails. They stream back. I continually quit Mail to get rid of them. They come back.

Now I can't even put 349 messages into a New Folder. After they are inserted into the New Folder... they move back to my Inbox. Why?

What is happening? It is taking a huge amount of my time and is frustrating. All of my email addresses are full of old, old deleted emails. It appears to be impossible to delete anything. Please help solve these problems.

Daphne

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Aug 23, 2026 1:16 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 24, 2026 7:50 AM in response to DaphneWay

I'm not using an Gmail or Yahoo mail account with Apple Mail. But from what I understand, Apple Mail can not delete forwarded emails from Gmail or Yahoo mail after you have opened them in Apple Mail. They will remain on the 3rd party mail account server and you will have to delete or archive them on these servers before you enable Apple Mail for these mail accounts again:

How Can I Stop Gmail Emails From Showing … - Apple Community

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Answer 2

DaphneWay Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 25, 2026 3:21 PM in response to Ingo2711

Ingo2711 - you've really helped me realize that Apple Mail is just a convenient "Viewer" of emails. Deletion has to be done via Webmail from Yahoo or Gmail site itself. I can't believe I wasted so many hours trying to do it in Mail. Thank you. Thank you! I don't know if using Mail is worth my time or energy or if it provides enough value. I don't believe in reinventing the wheel, but that's what I have to do if I use it. Mmm.

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Answer 3

DaphneWay Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 24, 2026 11:31 AM in response to Ingo2711

Ingo2711 - thank you! Yours is the most intelligent, logical explanation I've heard. If true, I hope that all other frustrated Mail users like me do a search and find your response.

Yes, I open new emails to my Yahoo account in Apple Mail. Then, in Apple Mail, I try but cannot delete them. Per your recommendation, I'll go into Yahoo Mail from my browser and spend hours deleting them there. What's weird, though, is that after I do that there is a lot of downloading large numbers of messages when I reopen Apple Mail. Hopefully, that is just shifting emails from Inbox to eternally RIP in permanent trash?

It's interesting that you call them forwarded emails. I do forward emails from one of my Gmail accounts to a Yahoo account... then read it on Apple Mail. Does that mean they are forwarded twice?

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Answer 4

Aug 24, 2026 3:07 AM in response to DaphneWay

Just to make sure, you have also deleted the old emails, using your Webmail account access for yahoo und gmail?

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Answer 5

Aug 25, 2026 12:19 AM in response to DaphneWay

I had to set up an App-specific password in the settings for my 3rd party mail account, to allow Apple Mail to log into this mail account, to be able to read, send and delete emails on this 3rd party mail server.

Emails are not forwarded, Apple Mail logs into the mail server to get them. But I'm not sure, if gmail and Yahoo support this feature, you might have to enable IMAP in the settings for Gmail, since POP settings will not work in the future, according to Gmail

Read Gmail messages on other email clients - Gmail Help

Maybe you should contact the Gmail Support directly, in case these settings are not supported for Apple Mail on their mail server settings.

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Answer 6

Aug 26, 2026 2:30 AM in response to DaphneWay

You're welcome 🙂

Not all providers support the option to read and delete emails on their servers by using Apple Mail.

In your case it might be better to use the Mail App for Gmail and Yahoo instead of Apple Mail.

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Answer 7

DaphneWay Author

Level 1

13 points

Aug 24, 2026 4:17 AM in response to Ingo2711

Ingo2711, yes, in the past, I have used Webmail account access to delete emails, when Mail continually didn't do the job.

Are you saying that I have to access email through a web browser to permanently delete emails? That seems to defeat the purpose of having a Mail app. My brother, a database developer, doesn't use the Mail app for that reason. But, seriously? Why isn't Mail working? My neighbor just told me her Apple Mail app won't delete emails either. She hired a Geek Squad tech to fix it and they couldn't.

Just for you, I went into a Yahoo account via Safari (I don't use Chrome), deleted some emails, moved some others... then went back into Mail app and it is now downloading 789 messages. Quit, went back in. Now it is downloading 238 messages. Not sure what it is doing. Hopefully catching up to what I did on the web. I've done that in the past after hours of deleting and back in Mail it says it is downloading 48,000 messages.

The problem with webmail is that Yahoo wants me to use Yahoo Mail and Google wants me to use Gmail App.

Can you help me use Mail to function correctly and Delete emails permanently? Any advice is appreciated.

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Answer 8

Aug 24, 2026 8:11 AM in response to DaphneWay

I have also found this Gmail Help page about forwarding Gmail to other mail accounts.

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