Mail database size limit

crt1 said:

Hi folks,

I am a new convert and am in the process of migrating my Outlook mail files to the Mail app in OS X.

I was wondering if there is any size limitation on the local mail database. (I am using a POP account so everything is local.)

Outlook has a 2 Gb database (.pst) limit but I found that it would really slow down performance to have a .pst bigger than 0.5 Gb. As a consequence, I have 6 different files dating back ~8 years that I would like to bring over. It sucks.

Does the OS X mail app have any problems like this?

Click to expand...

Im not entirely sure but i think your asking if OS X mail has issues where it begins to slow down after a while.

Im worriied im gonna end up sounding very fanboyish but im gonna try not to, but I find with OS X, you dont find much slow down as time goes by. Now of course as files get bigger and bigger and harddrives get fuller they do lag a big more. But compared to windows I find OS X handles this all quite better.

So yes if lets say your mail inbox was 5Gb I'd imagine it wouldnt be as fast as say 20Mb so I'd recommend every few months you do an archive of your inbox and then empty it. (i think thats what you meant u did on windows.. right?)

But on another hand I've been using the mail app on my macbook for about 5 months now, set with iMap on Gmail (maybe gmail automatically filters my inbox so it doesnt get bloated idk) but point is I have no emptied my inbox once (with an average of 10-20 emails a day) and I dont see any noticable slow down. Thats just me stating my experience tho.

I'm not aware of any limits in Mail on 10.5, but if it does start running slow for you, try Mailbox->Rebuild.

Mail would not be limited for your situation. No need to "archive" your mailbox due to MS Outlook's inability to keep track of files efficiently.

By the way I have over twenty-five thousand (25,000) email (although I use an really outdated app called Eudora), and the total space that it take is about 650MB. (I don't keep large attachments though).