I have moved from PCM to MacBook Pro. My MacBook Mail account has many duplicates. What’s the best way to find and then remove duplicate email messages?
—–
John
MacMost Q&A Forum • View All Forum Questions • Ask a Question
How To Search and Remove Duplicates In Mac Mail?
Comments: One Response to “How To Search and Remove Duplicates In Mac Mail?”
Comments Closed.
First, are you sure they are really duplicates? In many systems, like Gmail, you lable or "tag" messages. So a message can be "Archived" and "Important" and show up in both places. Plus, there is usually a "All" folder that shows everything again.
Think of it like playlists in iTunes, or albums in iPhoto. The song/photo is there once, but it appears in many lists.
And then there is the factor of what type of email you are using. If you are using IMAP email (or Gmail, or Exchange, or iCloud) then the email exists on the server and you are simply viewing it on your Mac in the email client. You use the term "Mail account" but that is incorrect -- you are using the same account, I presume, but you are using a different email client to view it. Like if you would switch browsers from Safari to Chrome -- it is the same Internet you are viewing, just a different client you are using to view it.
But if it turns out that you really do have multiple copies of the email, like say you are using old-fashioned POP email that downloads the email to your client, then just best way to remove duplicates is to just delete them manually.
Or, ignore them. These are old archived email messages, correct? So why pay any attention to them at all? Why waste time trying to clear out duplicates to save a few pennies of hard drive space?