iCloud storage not showing correctly for Mail

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Level 1

31 points

iCloud storage not showing correctly for Mail

I have a friend who was not able to backup her iPhone to iCloud because it was reporting that there was not enough storage. I checked her storage on her iPhone and her iCloud Mail was using 4.5GB of storage. She came from the me.com era so when I checked her Mail in iCloud she had tons of email dated from 2008 in her account. Many months ago she had started using gmail and had set up her gmail account to forward her gmail to her iCloud account, so, she had tons of email from there in her iCloud account. She had A LOT of email in her iCould account.

She told me she had forgotten all about the forwarding stuff from gmail and told me to go ahead and delete all email from all mailboxes and folders in iCloud, and also disable the forwarding from gmail. She basically wanted to clear her iCloud email out and not use it any longer.

I started with deleting mail from her Inbox and then choosing Empty Trash. I thought that would have deleted enough email to start seeing a decrease in the 4.5GB of storage, but it did not. So, I removed even more email and selected Empty Trash, and still saw no drop. I finally finished deleting everything, and selected Empty Trash and I'm STILL seeing 4.5GB on the iPhone. All of this was done over the course of about three short visits to her house.

On the last visit, just to make sure there was nothing in the Trash I selected Delete Trash from the gear icon in iCloud but now I get a notice that pops up saying the "Trash can not be deleted...try again later". I've been doing that for a couple of weeks and keep getting that notice. There is no email showing in the Trash though but it still says that the "Trash can not be deleted", plus iCloud is still showing 4.5GB of Mail storage. We're backing up her iPhone to her computer but still, what's the deal with the Mail storage. There is no email in her account.

How do I get iCloud to work with deleting the Trash and more importantly to correctly show that her Mail storage is 0 GB?

Thanks for any help

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 2:50 PM

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Answer 1

pvonk

Level 6

13,851 points

Oct 24, 2013 11:50 AM in response to plcmms

Have you used a computer's browser to log into icloud.com and look at the email page? There you should be able to see what's really there.

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Answer 2

plcmms Author

Level 1

31 points

Oct 24, 2013 12:07 PM in response to pvonk

Thanks for the reply, pvonk

Yes, I've deleted all the email using the online iCloud account, and it is showing to be empty.

I've hesitated putting my latest information on here but since you've rsponded now is a good time.

I was at my friend's house this morning checking her iCloud account (still showing 4.5 GB of Mail with no email showing in her account) and trying to backup again (can't due to not enough storage) so I called Apple Support. The person assigned to my problem was expressing some frustration after trying to do things with her account (he was seeing email in her account in their system even though I was seeing no email online), so he bumped it up to the next level (supervisor, I guess). That person immediately saw some quirky things going on with her account so he bumped it up to engineering, and that's where we are now. This will take a day or two for them to address this issue and then I will get a call.

When that happens and my friend is back in business I will post here what Apple found.

Thanks again for the reply.

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Answer 3

plcmms Author

Level 1

31 points

Oct 27, 2013 4:53 PM in response to plcmms

My friend's storage problem has been fixed.

I contacted Apple for help and they were immediately available and very helpful. The first person I talked to admitted that this account was showing other issues on his end and he was not sure how to correct it so he bumped it up to the next level. The second person quickly saw some bigger issues and suggested that "engineering" get involved. I was told that there should be a resolution in a day or two.

I contacted the second level guy today via email (two days later) and he wanted to make sure she had her iCloud account set up and enabled (I had disabled it) in Mail on her computer. He asked me to select Mail > Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items in her iCloud account. I wasn't sure why I was doing this since her Trash was empty and her storage was still showing 4.5GB for her Mail, but I did as I was instructed.

After I did that I checked her storage again and it showed 3.8GB! A few minutes later it had dropped to 618KB!

I asked what they did and he indicated that apparently their servers did not pick up my request to delete soooo many emails at one time.

Whether there's more to it than that I'm not sure, and I don't care. I do know that before I called them there was a problem and after I called them there is no longer a problem.

I will say they were very quick to assign someone to me (within a minute), very accommodating since I was not the owner, and quick to resolve the problem.

Overall, I'm a happy customer.

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Answer 4

Jan 1, 2015 10:39 PM in response to plcmms

I had a similar issue with my @ icloud .com email ID. After nearing 5 GB, I bulk deleted around 9000 emails to regain lost space, emptied the trash/sent/junk, to find that the storage space wasn't being reclaimed. Infact, I noticed this when emails sent to my icloud ID started bouncing.

I had to call Apple support, who escalated the matter to his superior ( who was a very helpful lady). After a day of phone calls, emails and the superiors further escalation, my storage space came back to 0 KB usage.

I noticed the same with my Dad's icloud email, where a storage space of 665 MB is stuck, inspite of clearing out all folders. Here too, I bulk deleted a huge quantity.

So my guess is that icloud servers don't react favorably to a bulk deletion.

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Answer 5

Nov 2, 2015 9:00 AM in response to plcmms

THANK YOU!!

I was so baffled! My iCloud storage said mail was taking up 2 GB, but on my devices, it was only 40 MB or so. Opened up Mail on my iMac and it was downloading 15K messages! From where?? I had deleted all but a select few from every folder, trash, archive, everything. After it downloaded those 15K, I did the delete you suggested, closed it and re-opened. Yup, another 8K to download. Deleted again and I'm all better!

Thanks again. This was super helpful.

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