Deleting emails from my Apple mail is SUCH A STRUGGLE!

[Tiskers]

Hello,

I have an M1 MacBook Pro from 2020, running Sequoia 15.6.1

But this is not a new problem... it's been going on for a LONG time.

Like a lot of people, my emails stack up fast and when they start getting to about 1000, I like to do a mass delete.
I sort messages by "FROM" and then just shift/delete batches at a time.
Which works fine... for a while.

Then the messages just stop deleting. I can try every which way to delete them... nothing. The command is just ignored!
I can walk away and come back later; I can reboot... still won't delete.

So I give it up and a few days later, try again. And the same thing happens.

It is beyond frustrating and Apple Support has been zero help at all.

I have several email addresses (both yahoo, gmail, and iCloud) that I receive and send mail from in my Apple mailbox, if that's a clue of anything.

Can someone please help? THANK YOU!

 

[Apple_Robert]

Have you tried doing Command +A? That will highlight in bulk and then you can hit the delete key. That works for me. However, I don't let the email count get as high as what you are doing, which makes it harder to clean out.

 

[aihpcfl]

I'm curious about a couple things. @Tiskers From what you describe, there is no error message. Correct? If you pick one of the individual message in the batch, can you delete that? Can you manually move the message to the delete items or trash folder? Can you manually move the batch of emails to the deleted items or trash folder? If those tests fail, can you manually move the batch of emails to the trash folder in On My Mac, and if so, delete them from there?

 

[Tiskers]

Hey thanks for the replies, guys! So appreciated!

@Apple_Robert: No, i have never tried that. But i will! Thank you!

@aihpcfl: What great thoughts and suggestions! I’m not really sure about the things you mentioned. And I’m getting ready to head out for the day with friends, so there’s no time to try them now. But i definitely will!

I will keep you posted. Thank you both so much! And if anyone thinks of annnnnything else - please share! Thanks again!

​

 

[aihpcfl]

@Tiskers I should have also asked if your email is setup as POP or IMAP. And should have also asked if your email is synchronizing, or is synchronization stuck. Look at your email accounts and folders in sidebar, and look at the bottom. If synchronization is stuck you will see a progress bar and numbers for x of y messages synchronized, and y will be growing with time and the process not completing.)

And one of the other things I'm wondering is if the emails won't delete because they are already deleted from the server (IMAP), but in my experience there would be an error message in this case. Again, if IMAP, can you look at your email in a browser and see if the email message is still there.

Also, try Rebuild (under Mailbox).

If synchronization is stuck, there is something to fix that, but lets wait if and until you get to that conclusion.

 

[Fishrrman]

Questions:

Who is your email provider?
Apple...?
Or... someone else?

If it's someone else...
and
If the provider also has a web-based email interface (I'm thinking of yahoo and ISPs that use yahoo for email), have you tried signing into the web page, and deleting the emails from there?