Mail app stuck moving iCloud emails to Gmail

[nyoninboh]

Hope this is an okay forum to post this:

I recently tried to free up some icloud space by moving some of my emails from my icloud account to my gmail accounts (all accounts accessed via Apple Mail Mac OS app).

The problem I have now is that Mail appears to be stuck copying the messages. They have disappeared from the original icloud account folder that I had saved them in, whilst not appearing in the new gmail folder I had copied them too.

Mail says it is 'moving messages 5251 of 7188'. But it has been on 5251 for over 24 hours now. I am scared to quit the app or restart the macbook in case I lose the mails permanently. If I had known this was going to be an issue I would have copied them in smaller batches.

Is there anything else I can try other than quitting / restarting?

Any help appreciated. Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. Macbook Pro M3 Max

 

[FreakinEurekan]

Check webmail (both www.icloud.com and www.gmail.com) - you may find that all of the messages are still "somewhere" even if they APPEAR to be missing on the Mac. If so, I'd feel more confident with restarting - then updating to 26.3.1, before trying the rest of them.

If they're not there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's a gamble. Toss the dice & see what happens.

 

[nyoninboh]

Check webmail (both www.icloud.com and www.gmail.com) - you may find that all of the messages are still "somewhere" even if they APPEAR to be missing on the Mac. If so, I'd feel more confident with restarting - then updating to 26.3.1, before trying the rest of them.

If they're not there ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it's a gamble. Toss the dice & see what happens.

I checked on icloud and gmail web interfaces and they're not there either 😩

(I should mention: some of the emails are showing in the new gmail folders, but many are missing. But what is in the Mail app mirrors what is in the web versions)

 

[arc of the universe]

Hope this is an okay forum to post this:

I recently tried to free up some icloud space by moving some of my emails from my icloud account to my gmail accounts (all accounts accessed via Apple Mail Mac OS app).

The problem I have now is that Mail appears to be stuck copying the messages. They have disappeared from the original icloud account folder that I had saved them in, whilst not appearing in the new gmail folder I had copied them too.

Mail says it is 'moving messages 5251 of 7188'. But it has been on 5251 for over 24 hours now. I am scared to quit the app or restart the macbook in case I lose the mails permanently. If I had known this was going to be an issue I would have copied them in smaller batches.

Is there anything else I can try other than quitting / restarting?

Any help appreciated. Mac OS Tahoe 26.2. Macbook Pro M3 Max

this kind of thing has happened to me as well, if i have done a major reorganization of where i store my email.
in my case, a restart of Mail, or even a restart of my Mac has never resulted in anything being lost. the counter indicting how many messages still need to be downloaded just resets itself to the number of messages still needing to be downloaded.
i also have had the stray phenomona of a couple of very old random emails suddenly being downloaded to my inbox even several days or weeks after a major mail reorganisation on my part.

 

[Ruggy]

Do you have an 'all mail' folder on the Gmail? You should have. Look there.
They are almost certainly somewhere. The process is two stage: move into a temp folder then transfer so they can disappear from both ends.
Sometimes, Gmail sees thousands of messsages coming in and panics- thinks maybe it's an attack or spam? So they maybe in the trash or spam folder.
It looks like you are in a write-loop error.
You should be able to force close the mac mail and it will restart it again- but I agree that sounds scary
You can try the 'rebuild' command which is under the 'mailbox' command right at the bottom. This may well find them.
You can check 'connection doctor' in Window to see if the connection is ok
Under 'Mailbox' you can find 'synchronise' and select Gmail. That may cause it to start again.
Good luck. As I say there's a really high chance they are in a hidden folder waiting to be transferred etc.

 

[BrianBaughn]

When you get this going again don't try to move or copy that many messages at once.

Move them in groups of 100 and check to see if the corresponding message count is correct in both folders after the operation is complete.

In the past, I've had what I assume are corrupted emails that will hang the copying/moving process. With thousands at once it's way more difficult to figure out what happened. You may have to omit any emails that seem to be corrupted.

 

[kkclstuff]

I had this issue last year where gmail abruptly (after almost 20yrs?) stopped showing any gmail messages in the Mail.app, but they were all still on the gmail servers.

you could try to 'rebuild' in the Mailbox Menu, or

completely delete the mail accounts on your Mac and re-create them (though this would depend on how you have your mail account setup—I have my gmail accts setup that all mail is left/saved on their (Gmail's) servers and the Mac Mail.app is merely a way to view/send mail)

 

[madrich]

I had this issue last year where gmail abruptly (after almost 20yrs?) stopped showing any gmail messages in the Mail.app, but they were all still on the gmail servers.

you could try to 'rebuild' in the Mailbox Menu, or

completely delete the mail accounts on your Mac and re-create them (though this would depend on how you have your mail account setup—I have my gmail accts setup that all mail is left/saved on their (Gmail's) servers and the Mac Mail.app is merely a way to view/send mail)

How did you setup it in the Apple Mail App not to store the GMails?

 

[kkclstuff]

IIRC,

on Mac; Mail settings; "Mailbox behaviors"; use the Gmail IMAP servers
in Gmail; make folders visible/'show'

How did you setup it in the Apple Mail App not to store the GMails?

well, the messages are copied onto my Mac. I leave the originals on the gmail servers in case of some disaster on my end/log in from anywhere.