Apple Mail - SPECIFICATIONS AND LIMITATIONS - Number of Mailboxes, Messages per Mailbox and Total Messages

I don't think there are hard limits.

Apple Mail can easily handle 500,000 emails. I have a number of folders with 30,000 emails so I don't expect an issue with 50,000 emails in a folder. I do know of one guy who complains about Mail performance with his 2 million emails. I haven't tried that; I only have about 200,000 emails total and it's just fine.

I don't know how many mailboxes; in general I'm not a fan of too many folders. I have about 15 folders total (I have an "archive" folder and then folders for 2001-2012 for older messages that I pull off the IMAP server after they're about 18+ months old.

I've got 22,000 messages in my Mail folder and it's been running real slow of late. You seem to be suggesting that I should be able to handle it. However, while running Mavericks 10.9.1, I'm also running on a mid 2009 17" MacBook Pro which is getting long in the tooth.

Do you speculate that I have a h/w issue or something else might be mucking up (and slowing down) my Mail program?

Most limitations will come from the server, not mail.

I think you are asking the wrong question. Maybe not.

Grant

Thanks, Grant. It's AOL mail so I just deleted 2,000 messages in there and will see if it runs better. - S.

If you need to keep stuff don't delte it - create a local folder (plus sign on left) and drag the older stuff there.

I have one per year for the last decade+ - two actually, including sent mail

G

What is your "mail folder?" If it's your Inbox, that's problematic. You should not leave thousands of emails in your inbox as it is updated/changed very often. File messages away; there's no performance issue with 30,000+ emails in an "archive" or other folder as I noted.

Of course, an SSD is WAY faster than a laptop hard drive. But generally your machine should be OK, unless the hard drive is very full (a hard drive should NEVER be more than 80% full or performance will drop off DRAMATICALLY), or it's starting to fail (4 1/2 years on a laptop hard drive is a very long time, it's time to upgrade the drive if nothing else).