Untick "Store draft messages on server" doesn't save preferences.

Problems such as yours are sometimes caused by files that should belong to you but are locked or have wrong permissions. This procedure will check for such files. It makes no changes and therefore will not, in itself, solve your problem.

First, empty the Trash.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it, then copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C:

find ~ $TMPDIR.. \( -flags +sappnd,schg,uappnd,uchg -o ! -user $UID -o ! -perm -600 -o -acl \) 2> /dev/null | wc -l

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the icon grid.

Paste into the Terminal window (command-V). The command may take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear.

The output of this command, on a line directly below what you entered, will be a number such as "41." Please post it in a reply.

Back up all data. Don't continue unless you're sure you can restore from a backup, even if you're unable to log in.

This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership and access-control lists to the default. If you've set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it.

Step 1

If you have more than one user account, and the one in question is not an administrator account, then temporarily promote it to administrator status in the Users & Groups preference pane. To do that, unlock the preference pane using the credentials of an administrator, check the box marked Allow user to administer this computer, then reboot. You can demote the problem account back to standard status when this step has been completed.

Enter the following command in the Terminal window in the same way as before (triple-click, copy, and paste):

{ sudo chflags -R nouchg,nouappnd ~ $TMPDIR.. ; sudo chown -R $UID:staff ~ $_ ; sudo chmod -R u+rwX ~ $_ ; chmod -R -N ~ $_ ; } 2> /dev/null

This time you'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning to be careful. If you don’t have a login password, you’ll need to set one before you can run the command. If you see a message that your username "is not in the sudoers file," then you're not logged in as an administrator.

The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. Wait for a new line ending in a dollar sign (“$”) to appear, then quit Terminal.

Step 2 (optional)

Take this step only if you have trouble with Step 1 or if it doesn't solve the problem.

Boot into Recovery. When the OS X Utilities screen appears, select

Utilities ▹ Terminal

from the menu bar. A Terminal window will open.

In the Terminal window, type this:

res

Press the tab key. The partial command you typed will automatically be completed to this:

resetpassword

Press return. A Reset Password window will open. You’re not going to reset a password.

Select your boot volume ("Macintosh HD," unless you gave it a different name) if not already selected.

Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.

Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.

Select

 ▹ Restart

from the menu bar.

I found a solution here: http://tidbits.com/article/14219

Hope this helps for you,

What worked for me:

set labels in gmail so inbox, sent, drafts, all mail, spam and trash show in IMAP (all others hidden)

Make sure there are no other labels in use. (if you rely on labels, sorry, this won't work for you) In the past, Mail.app created various archive labels and other ways of notating such things. Get rid of them, and make sure anything assigned to these labels is assigned to the correct "standard" label. i.e. if it's in a label named "archive," move those messages to all mail.

Go to system settings in your mac and select internet accounts. Completely remove your gmail account. To double check, go into mail.app preferences as well and be sure the account has been deleted there as well.

In system preferences, re-add the google account. open mail, and in preferences > accounts > advanced, set prefix to [Gmail]

Hi Ludwip

Gmail recommend you uncheck the box but it won't save the changes. Frustrating it is!

The answer is to change the settings in gmail firstly. This is from another post.

1) Quit Mail.app.

2) Log into Gmail on the web

3) Click on the "gear" symbol

4) Select "Settings".

4) Click on the "Labels" tab.

5) Under "System Labels" find "Drafts"

6) Click on "show if unread" and uncheck "Show in IMAP"

Now go back to Apple Mail

1) Launch Mail.app.

2) Select Mail from the title bar and Preferences...

3) Click on the "Accounts" button in the toolbar.

4) Click on the Google account

5) Click on "Mailbox Behaviors" tab.

5) Uncheck the "Store draft messages on the server" box.

6) Close the window and opt to save your changes when prompted.

Job done!