Mac mail will not delete mail, spam, junk or mailboxes

Lets go through this one step at a time ... Do you have multiple accounts? If so, do the following steps for each account. 1. Check Mail/Preferences/Select the account/Mailbox behaviours/ ... then 2. check Junk and Trash for the appropriate responses. Once this is done, 3. Rebuild your Mailbox. 4. ALL of them. 5. To delete a Mailbox, select the Mailbox, Click the star at the bottom for a pop up menu, then select Delete Mailbox. Since you have a Junk mail issue, simply filter it directly into your junk folder to delete them permanently when you close the application. No one is responsible for what you get in your Mailbox. If you're still not satisfied, then Mail/Provide Mail feedback. Btw, if you have anything other than Apple's Mail, then their behaviour is dependant upon their relevant mail servers.

Glad that the suggestion came handy. In any case, if something like this ever happens simply follow the steps above.

JohnTh I have searched this site but can't find help for the following problem. Macbook Air/Lion/Mail app...when I deleted mails/empty trash my deleted emails are gone, but when I do a search in mail it shows multiple copies of deleted emails in the search results. Where do they come from (if deleted and trash emptied why are they still there?)? and how do I get stop these multiple emails from showing up? The only other mail account I have linked to mail is gmail (which I don't use). Here's the Mailbox settings for the gmail account - can this be the problem?

GMail handles mail differently. Your issues stem from the way GMail 'labels' all mail. You need to fix it at in GMail itself and this has nothing to do with Mail on the Mac.

JohnTh,

I have a similar issue with Mail.

I have an account set up with a remote Exchange server. It has never had a problem syncing up with my iMac as well as my iPad and Android phone.

I wanted to move several hundred emails from the "Trash" folder to the "Archive" folder so that the old deleted messages are not still sitting on the Exchange server.

When I try to do that (drag from Trash to Archive) they appear to move....but then when I click on another folder and go back to trash, the have reappeared!

I thought it was the volume of emails I selected, but it won't even let me delete or move ONE email from trash!

Any help is appreciated.

Could you clarify some things:

1. Do you have more than one email account? Is one of them an Apple email account?

2. Is it that you wish to move stuff which is in the Trash on the Exchange server to your Mac to archive?

Another thing: I dont think you can drag mail from the Trash to Archive directly. Try dragging it to the Inbox first then archiving.

What is your Mac model, year and OS?

John,

I have a similar issue in which I am trying to clear out inbox, by moving emails directly to subfolders that have been created. It seems to do so, and then when i click back into inbox, the emails are still there. What is going on?

I am using an exchange server, but I don't think its the issue. I have recently switched from outlook back to apple mail, and I want it to operate as it should. When i switched over to Apple mail, I had to use a program that converted outlook files to .olm files and then import everything in. Now that all 30k emails are in there, in their correct, categorized folders, apple mail has now downloaded another set of the emails from the server, meaning there are now 30,000 additional emails (which have already been cataloged appropriately. The simple fix would be for me to delete the new emails, but every time i do that, mail keeps reinserting that mail into my inbox. any help???

I cannot delete anything from my inbox at all! I try every which way to delete and they seem to go but do not appear in my trash folder and when I go back to my inbox are still there. Very very annoying

Mailbox preferences are all ok.

Have never had this problem until recently.

Any thoughts??????

I had a few messages that were hanging out in my junk mailbox and refused to be deleted. Clearly it was an Exchange bug, so I moved them one by one to the Trash folder "On My Mac." Then I just deleted them. It worked!