Spotlight found every email ever!

[Mpulsive81]

I just happened to be playing with spotlight tonight and typed in "@mac.com". Strangely enough, it pulled up EVERY email i've ever sent or received, even those that have been deleted (and i'm talking every email ever....since i bought the computer in june 06). How on earth did it do that?! I'd hate to think that's taking up space on my Mac. Can anyone help me figure out how to get it to stop saving everything?

 

[jsw]

Have you ever emptied the trash in email?

 

[devilot]

Have you ever emptied the trash in email?

In a similar vein but for future emails, you could go to Mail> Preferences> Accounts> select the mailbox/ account you want to alter (on the left side) > "Mailbox Behaviors"

You can fiddle with the Trash behaviors.

 

[Mpulsive81]

Yeah i'm pretty anal about keeping stuff tidy and neat, so i empty my trash before i close mail. That's what so surprising about my findings. I found last night that there was something checked that said "keep deleted files on server" and "keep sent files on server". I'm thinking it just kept everything and never deleted themselves automatically. That was really an odd thing. Especially when i think about it....why would something on the .mac server show up in my spotlight if it's not in my computer?

I didn't have the option to "reveal in finder" so i have no idea where they store those emails. I'm hoping i cleaned it up though.

 

[devilot]

I found last night that there was something checked that said "keep deleted files on server" and "keep sent files on server". I'm thinking it just kept everything and never deleted themselves automatically... why would something on the .mac server show up in my spotlight if it's not in my computer?

Hm, maybe that is why it showed up in spotlight. And why would something from the .mac server show up in the search results? Well, you've told your mail.app to essentiallly always be connected to that server, so why wouldn't it? Makes sense to me.

And it's set to keep things on the server by default, IIRC. Don't remember for sure though.

 

[geekytrent]

even though you delete the files, they are still kept for recovery reasons in your mailbox file/folder. if you go to ~/Library/Mail/ you'll find your email mailboxes and the files there. if you want to be sure what you delete is actually gone, you can delete them from there, and then they will be gone forever....also, since it was a .Mac account, you use IMAP which keeps the emails on the server you are connecting to unless you go to the settings for the email account and select to delete after download or empty trash, ect.

 

[Mpulsive81]

Fantastic, that's what i was looking for. When i get off of work tonight i'll check those folders and see what all's been hanging around still