I recently did a restore of some emails from a Time Machine backup. The restored emails were placed in the mailbox com.apple.Mail.Backup. I no longer need that mailbox but when I try to delete it, nothing happens.
On Sierra 10.12.3.
Any thoughts?
MacBook Air, macOS Sierra (10.12.3)
May be a long shot. Quit Mail. Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library/Mail/V4 and see if you can find/delete the mailbox there.
May be a long shot. Quit Mail. Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library/Mail/V4 and see if you can find/delete the mailbox there.
Thanks for the idea jeremy. I tried in safe mode. Same behavior. I also noticed that the mailbox has three mailboxes underneath it which I can also not delete. I can attempt to delete the emails in those three mailboxes, but if I do a rebuild they come back. Weird behavior.
Other thoughts?
Thanks again for the suggestion Eric. I fixed the issue, here's how.
When I went to Library/Mail/V4/Mailboxes there was no folder with the name "com.apple.Mail.Backup" to delete. This was an interesting find. What I realized was that the mailboxes in this folder were not my current ones. So I searched for where they were and they were in Library/Mail/V4/AosIMAP-ksdenison. Once there I deleted the folder, quit Mail and restarted.
Once I restarted I was able to delete the mailbox from within Mail.
Weird but done!
Yes. Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder.
In High Sierra I see a Mail/V5 folder. In it there are a lot of folders with strange names. One of them is called:
6C821BCA-0C72-4AAA-837C-3DC29677062F.
In that is a folder in one called:
com.apple.Mail.Backup.mbox.
In that is:
info.plist
Recovered Messages-1.mbox
Recovered Messages-2.mbox
Recovered Messages-3.mbox
Recovered Messages.mbox
Each of these have a bunch of folders numbered sub-folders. The final one has "Messages" with one very old email.
Should I delete the com.apple.Mail.Backup.mbox directory and get rid of all of this stuff?
Or will I 'brick' Apple Mail by doing so?
Thanks.
Don't try to delete the recovered mailboxes , that are saved in user library > mail > V5 folder ( For Mac OS High Sierra ) , you will damage your mail application , keep them there only they won't give any harm .
Thanks for the answer. Let me ask this. Why does the folder show up on left panel of Apple Mail? I never saw it before until I messed with restoring a few emails via Time Machine under Sierra (not H.S.) I can understand Apple putting something in the panel, but NOT something that can't be deleted... and something with a better name than "com.apple.Mail.Backup" (with that capitalization.) And why are there 4 sub-folders all of them empty under it. Is this just 'bad' software or am I just being obsessive? (Note: I have 40 years of professional paid software design and programming... started in 1974 with Ross Perot's EDS.)
I think you can safely delete them. Quit Mail. Move the files to your Desktop. Reopen Mail and test.If everything is normal, delete the files from your Desktop. If you have problem, quit Mail, return the file to where you got them from, and reopen Mail and test.
Thanks for post, Eric. However, knowing how fragile Apple software is these days, I'm wary of deleting anything without the assurance from Apple that I won't brick the app or the entire system.
That said, has anyone out there with High Sierra tried to delete the com.apple.Mail.Backup folder and has lived to tell about it?
I'm having this issue also.
After restoring some emails, I now have a new (and unwanted) mailbox - com.apple.Mail.Backup mailbox
I'm not going to delete library file information, so hopefully this problem is fixed in due course.
I am able to delete through the UI. Steps I took: 1) selected all the sub-mailboxes under com.apple... 2) cntrl-clicked delete ( which did not delete the mailboxes, but did delete all the contained messages). 3) read this thread about all the command-line methods, and tried a bunch of other stuff, then.... voila 4) renamed the first sub-folder to com.apple... and after the rename it just disappeared. (Don't know if com.apple... itself will delete after I 'rename/delete' the hundred or so sub-folders. No need to guess what files to delete, nor take the risk of deleting something important.
Am pleased that I'm able to restore from Time Machine, but like another posted, annoyed that it secretly and silently planted the mailboxes into this com.apple... folder.
Thanks prekratic.
Renaming the root folder (i.e., com.apple.Mail.Backup) worked for me! Renamed to com.apple (which I don't think matters, but...) and voila, I could delete it. I did not rename the sub-folders.
Let me understand. We have a (root) folder under On My Mac named com.apple.Mail.Backup. Under that I have four (now empty) sub folders:
Recovered Messages
Recovered Messages-1
Recovered Messages-2
Recovered Messages-3
Did you just rename the root folder and the everything disappeared? Or did you first rename each of sub-folders to "com.apple," they disappeared and then you renamed the root?
Thanks.
I only renamed the root folder. I did not rename the sub-folders.
Once I renamed the root folder, I then deleted the root folder, including all of it's contents. I did not not need to delete the sub-folders first. Hope this clarifies.
Cannot Delete Mailbox "com.apple.Mail.Backup" after Time Machine Restore
