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X Tips: Apple Posts Mail Clean-up Instructions

OS X’s Mail application uses IMAP to retrieve Mac.com e-mail, which means mail messages are left on the server even AFTER you press delete for up to one month. This means that, without any warning, exceeding the 5 meg allotment on mac.com’s server will thwart any incoming e-mail. Fortunately, Apple has posted instructions for remedying the problem.

OS X’s Mail application uses IMAP to retrieve Mac.com e-mail, which means mail messages are left on the server even AFTER you press delete for up to one month. This means that, without any warning, exceeding the 5 meg allotment on mac.com’s server will thwart any incoming e-mail. Fortunately, Apple has posted instructions for remedying the problem.

Here’s the word from Apple:

By default, the Mail application in Mac OS X uses IMAP to retrieve Mac.com email, so all messages in all folders within the account are stored on Apple’s server. Even deleted messages remain on the server for a month unless you choose otherwise. If your 5 megabyte mailbox on the server fills up, you cannot receive new email.

To free space in your server mailbox:

Open Mail and create a local mailbox, which is stored on your hard disk, where you can copy email you want to save. To do this, click Personal Mailboxes in the Mailboxes drawer and choose New Mailbox from the Mailbox menu. (If you don’t see your mailboxes, choose Show Mailboxes from the View menu.)
Drag email you want to keep from your Mac.com mailboxes to the local mailbox. Then select remaining messages and choose Delete from the Message menu. (This moves them to your Deleted Messages folder on the server.) Finally, to remove the deleted messages from the server, choose Empty Deleted Messages from the Mailbox menu.
You may see Empty Deleted Items, Empty Trash, or Compact Mailbox instead of the Empty Deleted Messages command, depending on how you set up Mail.
To change how often deleted mail is automatically erased from the server, open Mail Preferences and click Viewing.
To see how much space a mailbox is occupying, open Mail, choose Show Status Line from the View menu, and click a mailbox.

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.