how do i remove archive folder in mail?

Yes, it's a Gmail system folder and cannot be deleted in Mail.

But you can fix it.

Log on to gmail in your browser.

Go to "settings"

Click on "labels"

Find the "all mail" label and uncheck "show in IMAP"

The label/folder will no longer who on your Apple Mail folder list the next time you start Mail.

There may be a difference in behavior between Google business accounts and plain old individual freeloader accounts. The policy might be set by the business. I do not know anything for a fact. Just thought I'd add this to the thread in case someone comes along who knows. I have both kinds of accounts.

Interestingly all the messages /came back/ into 'Archive' after I had deleted them, and then emptied them from the trash. Some time passed before they came back. I repeated this experiment with a plain gmail account -- and nothing has come back yet after about 2 hours. FYI only.

Tried that it didn't work. Did it on all my gmail accounts. Some didn't even show "Archive" The box is still there and still has over 10000 messages, slowing down mail.

I had gotten rid of the archive folder until i upgraded to Sierra. Now it won't go away & mail takes a long time to load, freezes up a lot.

Any other suggestions as how to make this folder disappear?

Where is this "annoying folder" located? Is this a Mail folder? If so what happens when you try to delete it?

Highlight the folder. Mailbox>delete mailbox

Barry

It looks to be a folder that is from "Gal Mail." is that a Gmail-based account? Gmail has an "All Mail" folder.

This worked, thank you! (not OP, just set up a new user acct and had same problem) I tried to delete this folder directly once and deleted a lot of messages I wanted to keep. Thank you.

Bill Donna,

I tried what you suggested, but unfortunately it doesn't work for me: if I uncheck "show in IMAP" Mac Mail doesn't show any incoming email, even though I can see them via the browser on my Gmail account.

If I check the "show in IMAP" box on the Gmail server then emails are delivered to the inbox folder of Mac Mail... and also in the useless "archive" folder. 😠

Is there any other solution?
I'm running Yosemite.

Regards

solomare wrote:

Bill Donna,

I tried what you suggested, but unfortunately it doesn't work for me: if I uncheck "show in IMAP" Mac Mail doesn't show any incoming email, even though I can see them via the browser on my Gmail account.

If I check the "show in IMAP" box on the Gmail server then emails are delivered to the inbox folder of Mac Mail... and also in the useless "archive" folder. 😠

Is there any other solution?
I'm running Yosemite.

Regards

Again, that useless behavior you see is because of how the useless Gmail manages email. It is in both "folders," so Mail shows it in both folders. That's just how Gmail works.

I have seen others report the result you get when disabling All Mail in IMAP. I don't know why it does that for some people, but not all.

I too am extremely frustrated with this feature... which seems to be Google created a folder ,,,,,,,,seen via IMAP that contains copies of all messages whether sent or rcvd. They state that this is good for you on some of their pages, When they rolled out gmail - it was like "You'll never have to delete another email message, ever". Well. what if I want to get rid of stale info, etc? Anyway, recently I went to gmail.com settings and found that the radio button /OPTION/ for not archiving is grayed out. See screen grab. So you can't turn it off if you want to. Further (and I tested this with one of my gmail accounts) if you DO persist in trashing the message in "Archive (All Mail)" folder -- IT GETS RID OF the messages in my INBOX and SENT mail. It's like they are "pre-archived". SO User BEWARE. I Think this is a Google Server issue, not an Apple Mail problem.

GOOGLE: DO NO EVIL! Please.

Choices are grayed out - not functional... WHY?

Choices are grayed out - not functional... WHY?

You have to set Auto-expunge to Off in the settings above that.

Incredible! Yes, that answers that. There is no clue that is the case in the "User Interface" for that IMAP setting page on gmail.com. This may be the answer for new accounts and to stop this unwanted behavior, but people should stuill beware of deleting everything in "Archive (All Mail)". It really means it.

Rant: Email has become too complex for its own good. So many people wasting so many hours of their life trying to figure stuff like this out. Thanks Google!

Thanks to Barney-15E!

I followed the two suggestions - unchecked "show in IMAP" and also set the Auto-expunge to "OFF." Now I have zero emails showing up in my Gmail account Mail inbox. I reset the two settings back to the default, sent a test email, and that one email now shows up in my Gmail account Mail inbox. The rest of them are gone. I can still access them via Gmail, but I do like being able to access multiple email accounts in Mail. I'd like to get rid of the emails showing up in the Archive folder and not being able to delete them. Any suggestions? Perhaps I should not have changed both settings? I dislike that Archive folder so much that I'm tempted to just delete all my Gmail accounts from Mail and only use it for my one Apple email account. Thanks for any help you might be able to offer.

The only way to get rid of the Archive folder (actually, it is All Mail in Gmail) is to dump Gmail altogether.

Some people seem to get the same results as you. For me, everything works as I described. All Mail does not show and my deleted emails are actually deleted.

I don't know if anyone has resolved the missing folders anomaly. I imagine you don't see the emails in the Inbox as the Inbox label was removed from the messages. Only the All Mail label remains, so it doesn't show in the inbox.

Try going into Gmail web interface, select a message from All Mail, and mark it with an Inbox label. Then, see if it shows up in Mail's Inbox.