An error occurred while moving messages to mailbox “(null)”.

I found a way to fix this. I assume you're using an IMAP account. If so, you should be able to expand the mail account and see the folders that exist on the server. Find the one you want to use for Trash, select it, then go to the "Mailbox" menu and find "Use This Mailbox As..." and select "Trash Mailbox". You can do the same for sent messages, junk, etc. Once I did this, the message stopped appearing.

Hi,

I was trying to set up an email account with Mail using my hostgator email account to use IMAP. I've just recently upgraded to Yosemite. Like the other poster above, "Use This Mailbox A..." worked for me, and I wanted to reiterate that here for future generations to unearth via google...

I have seen a TON of messageboard questions to this error... "An error occurred while moving messages to mailbox “(null)”." This happened for trash, junk, and draft saving of emails.

I could see the various folders underneath my mapped email account main folder, but they weren't showing up in my mail's groupings. Except, when they'd try, they'd show up with a big grey dot beside them an an arrow down.

So, I saw some help files on rebuilding my mailbox from here: Mailbox>Rebuild.

I tried that and it wouldn't work. But, then, I noticed this setting just above it... Mailbox>Use This Mailbox As...

That's the trick. Just pick your IMAP junk folder, and pick "junk". Pick your IMAP's deleted folder, and pick "trash".

Boom boom boom, and the error message disappears and everything is "live" on my IMAP account. 😀

Worked like a charm!

Jon

Hi Tommytune72,

If you are having an issue with moving emails to the Trash, I would suggest rebuilding the affected mailboxes, in this case both the source (where the message was when you tried to delete it) and the Trash. Rebuild mailboxes by following the steps in this article -

Mail (Mavericks): Rebuild mailboxes

Note that while the article title says Mavericks, the same steps apply to Yosemite.

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Best,

Brett L

This seems to be the resolution of the problem - worked for me too.

I found a way to fix this. I assume you're using an IMAP account. If so, you should be able to expand the mail account and see the folders that exist on the server. Find the one you want to use for Trash, select it, then go to the "Mailbox" menu and find "Use This Mailbox As..." and select "Trash Mailbox". You can do the same for sent messages, junk, etc. Once I did this, the message stopped appearing.

It did for me too until I picked the correct trash folder first and then went back up into the "use this mailbox as" folder where it became ungreyed. Make sure you select the proper folder where the trash is going to be.

Have seen this error from time to time and tried the different solutions suggested here. Then looked around and found a trash folder 'On this Mac' which shouldn't be there, as all accounts I use are IMAP, and I want trash to go to folders of each of the accounts e.g. Gmail.

I could see that some of the emails that refused to be 'deleted' (moved to trash) was in this general 'On this Mac' folder.

I deleted the 'On this Mac' folder and it seems to work. Btw. I found similar extra local folders for spam and send mail too.

I'll be back if this solution doesn't work.

The same thing happened to me after upgrading to 10.11.4. Is that what happened to you. I learned from a different but related thread that one fix is to remove the account from mail and then recreate it. Since it is an IMAP account you shouldn't lose any messages.

I experienced the same error. I rebuilt the mailbox but that did not solve the problem. I deleted the account and set up again. No problems after that.

Yep, after many many attempts at different solutions the old "delete the account and re-install it" worked for me.

Is now working fine, thanks!!

This worked for me. Thank you for solving a problem which has troubled me for months. In my case the problem account listed multiple boxes under trash. By choosing one as the trash box the others (draft, sent, junk, trash) disappeared and I was left with a functioning trash for this account.

This worked for me! I also had noticed a sent message disappearing. I fixed this the same way by selecting the Drafts, Sent, Junk and Trash mailboxes that appeared in the "Inbox" as lists under the malfunctioning mailboxes, and individually assigning them properly in the "Use this mailbox" pulldown menu.

Thanks!

I've set up Mail on my Mac (OS X) iPad and iPhone. No problems with my Gmail account. And no problems with iOS.

Last time I set up an IMAP account, say mail.npsonder.com I had this problem with my Archive folder. Also in Mail (on Mac) all folders were found under Inbox instead of the normal way in the left panel under e.g. Npsonder.

To resolve the problem I 'just' had to enter the right names of the IMAP account instead of the generic mail.npsonder.com that worked properly for most actions. The actual name was like mail14.ispname.com, and everything works right now.

Thanks for the solution, tbiske. Worked for me after having to reinstall IMAP accounts in Mail.