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How to "super delete" Mail messages in Mail?

Hello.


I have 1000 emails in the trashbin in Mail (on my computers hardisk in the program "Mail". Is it possible to delete them forever so that I will not have to sort the same emails again on my second computer (when the download from the mail servers)?


I have not been using the other computer for several months so I know it is a lot of emails to go throught there (copies). Ususally when I start up the mail program on my second mac it downloads duplicate emails so I have to sort them all out again.


I have two macs with similar setup in Mail.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 4 Gb Ram, 2.4 GHZ Intel Core Duo 2

Posted on Feb 8, 2014 5:52 AM

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17 replies

Feb 8, 2014 8:41 AM in response to Norwegian_Macfan68

There may be a better way but I would try the following.


Method:


  1. Quit Mail on both Macs
  2. Locate Mail folder on second Mac (~/Library/Mail) and dupicate it (cmd d)
  3. Copy Mail folder from first Mac to second
  4. Repeat items 2 & 3 for Mail preferences (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist)
  5. Start Mail on second Mac to see if it has worked


Warning:


This should make the second Mac's email exactly the same as the first. If the second Mac had extra accounts etc they will no longer be available until you reverse this. It should be easy to delete unwanted accounts.


If this fails to work it should not be too difficult to reverse everything.


A better way perhaps:


If you use POP you may wish to see my post at: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5880361?answerId=24804362022#24804362022

Feb 8, 2014 8:56 AM in response to Neville Hillyer

Hello. The second computer has other emails in archive from the past so I better not duplicate between them.


What I need is a way to delete mails permanently from the server (that is all the emails in my trash bin) once and for all so they do not re-download to my secondary computer.


In the preferences for the email accounts under "advanced" there is a button labelled something like "delete now". Will this delete the files in the trash bin or what does it delete?

Feb 8, 2014 12:12 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

I empty the trash folder in mail by right clicking on it and selceting "remove erased messages" (or something like that. My Mail program is not in english it is in norwegian.



Btw. How about using this procedure:


http://www.connectnc.com/clients/knowledgebase.php?action=displayarticle&id=7


Change options for the delete from server to something like "when moved from the inbox"


and then click "Remove now"?


I hesitate do try anything yet since it is 3 thousand emails and I want to make sure it works.

How to "super delete" Mail messages in Mail?

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