When I delete a message, I get the following error: "An error occurred while moving messages to mailbox “(null)”." What's more, the message does delete, but it doesn't end up in the trash, or anywhere for that matter - it's lost forever. Anybody know a fix?
MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2011), OS X Yosemite (10.10)
There are several ways to do this. Here's one that worked for me with multiple accounts.
Open up Mail Preferences
Select "Accounts"
Select the appropriate account from the sidebar.
Under the "Trash Mailbox" dropdown, select the folder that you want to use as the Trash mailbox. Note that in IMAP accounts, it should be present. Select it and it will translate automatically to the correct IMAP path.
Do this for each account.
For some reason when reinstalling email accounts, it is apparently not obvious to the installation "wizard" that the Trash folder should be the Trash folder. In some cases it's pointing to nowhere, hence the "null" message.
I finally fixed this issue on my Mac…
• Log in to Gmail using your browser
• Go to Settings
• Click on Labels
• Under System Labels –> Trash, tick the box for 'Show in IMAP'
The Trash folder in Mail –> Preferences –> (your account) –> Mailbox Behaviours –> Trash Mailbox should now be available and the (null) alert when deleting a message should be gone
…hopefully
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
Brett, thanks, but unfortunately that doesn't help.
Tom
Hi Tommytune72,
Thank you for using Apple Support Communities. Due to the nature of the issue you described you may find more information by using another one of Apple's support resources - https://getsupport.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action.
Brett L
If you get a reply Tom, please let us know on here. I have the same problem but don't want to pay the £35 for the answer. :-/
Hi,
I´m having the same problem. Attaches is screenshot of message.
If anyone finds fix please let me know.,
Alex
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.
PDJ-SF, I'm glad that worked for you. I didn't want to do this because my account is through iCloud, and deleting the Mail portion of it means disconnecting all the other iCloud services and then reconnecting them. I also figured that it would accomplish largely the same result as rebuilding the mailbox, as in Brett L's solution above.
But, I decided to go ahead and try deleting everything. The good news is that it didn't take as long as I thought it would, and after signing back in and checking all the boxes, iCloud services appear to be working. The bad news is I still get the same error message when deleting messages from my Inbox, and the message seems to be gone forever.
With me, out my six accounts it only happens on one of them. Unfortunately the one I use the most...
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.
Thanks for the reply. That was suggested in another forum on the same theme, but did not work for me.
HOWEVER, since the last update to OS X, I have not noticed the problem. After the update my Trash folders all seem to have returned to normal, looking like trash cans, and deleting messages in my inbox doesn't bring up the same error message. I'll let you know if anything changes, but so far so good.
Thanks, this fixed my problem.
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
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.
An error occurred while moving messages to mailbox “(null)”.
