My husband accidentally added a new mailbox as a smart mailbox. Now all of his mail from all of the regular mailboxes has gone into this. If he deletes the messages from the smart mailbox, they become deleted in the regular mailboxes. He cannot move them either. How can I undo what he has done? Apart from restoring a TC backup.
iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2), 21.5 inch
I'm having a similar issue. Upon right-clicking the smart mailbox I wish to delete, there is no "delete mailbox" option; further, when I select the "Mailbox" tab from the menu bar, the "delete mailbox" option is grayed out (unelectable). Is there a specific setting that is causing this to be so?
Think of a smart mailbox like a persistent search. Smart mailboxes do not actually move mail, they just find mail that matches their parameters and display that mail all in one place (mailbox).
Thus, you cannot move things in and out of a smart mailbox by dragging. The mail was never "in there".
So, to delete a smart mailbox, you right-click or control-click on the name of the mailbox itself. A drop-down menu appears, and you should see "Delete Mailbox..." as one of the options. Select it, and the smart mailbox will be gone.
You will see a message that reminds you that deleting a smart mailbox will NOT delete its contents.
How to delete a Mail smart mailbox
