Ever since I installed High Sierra, 10.13.3 my iMac has developed a very irritating email deletion bug. I have two emails in my junk folder that refuse to delete. In fact, just clicking on them causes the computer to lock up completely, requiring a hard reboot. Other times, when I try to delete a group of emails from the inbox, I get an error message telling me “Mail could not copy messages to the folder ‘News of the Weird” which doesn’t even exist on my computer. Trying to delete them a second time works perfectly. It’s not the biggest problem in the world, but it sure is annoying. Can I reinstall the mail app without reinstalling the whole OS?
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David
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How Do I Delete Emails Without Locking Up My iMac?
Comments: 3 Responses to “How Do I Delete Emails Without Locking Up My iMac?”
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Most email issues are server-based. It looks like you are using an old ISP-based email account. You should consider moving on from that.
It is hard to advise without knowing how you access your ISP email. If you are using IMAP, then the Mail app is just reflecting what is on the server. So then your best option would be to use your ISP's web-based email viewer and delete it directly on the server from that. But many ISPs don't even offer a web-based version.
If you are using old POP email, then the message really is on your Mac (and you probably have issues getting email on multiple devices with POP too). It shouldn't cause a problem in this case because the email is just a file on your Mac and it isn't communicating with the server to delete.
Without a firsthand look I'll have to guess and say this is probably a problem with your ISP-based email provider.
Thx for the quick reply Gary. I need to stick with my ISP email since that's one I've been using for 8+ years as my business email for 100+ clients. Sadly, I'm a throwback to the POP days since I want the same emails on all 4 of my devices. IMAP doesn't work for me because if I delete an email on one device, it's deleted on all. Your suggestion to poke around on my ISP's email server is a good one and I'll do that. Thank you.
You should at least seriously start thinking about going with IMAP. With IMAP, at least with a good provider, you never delete anything at all. You just archive. There are so many advantages I can't think of one good reason to stay with POP over IMAP. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if POP stopped working for you at some point.
Also, be thinking about getting away from your ISP anyway. Consider what would happen if you had to move to a location that didn't have that ISP? You'd lose your email address and have to act quick to tell everyone. At least now you can do it and still occasionally check your old email address for people who didn't get the message.