How do I prevent Mail from downloading messages from IMAP?

I just set up Mail to use two of my email accounts for a very limited purpose that requires IMAP. As soon as it got the Gmail one created, Mail started downloading all 3,700 Gmail messages in my folders AND ARCHIVE. The x button did not stop the process. I don't want mail on my laptop hard drive. I set Preferences to "get mail ... manually" on both accounts. When I restarted Mail, it started downloading the rest of the 3,700 plus new stuff in the other account. How do I prevent Mail from ever downloading unless I tell it to? Email replies preferred because I am not in the habit of looking at discussions I've never seen before and hope never to see again. --John
<Email Edited By Host>

This is what syncing is all about. It sounds like you deleted some mail while logged in on your phone. This deletes it from the server. When your Mac synced up with the server, it deleted the mail it had previously downloaded so it would be in sync with what was on the server. In the old days, assuming you really wanted that mail deleted, you would have had to manually delete it from every device. Now it does it automatically for you. Similarly, mail you send from your phone will also appear in the sent mail folder on your Mac; you don't have to check all your devices to find that message you sent last month.
If you haven't already emptied the email trash, you should be able to get those messages back.

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Assuming this is iWork '08 or earlier, the "documents" are actually packages. A package is really a folder hierarchy. A folder cannot be emailed unless it is archived somehow. Mail does this automatically; most other email programs would be incapable of sending a bare Pages document at all.
You could use some other non-blocked archive format, like tar or StuffIt. Or maybe you could rename it so that the mail servers don't recognize it as zip. You would have to instruct your recipient to rename it back. I understand that iWork '09 archives documents by default, although they are not named .zip, so that should be no longer an issue.

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Hmm.. probably not.
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is there any way to prevent Mail from downloading the same messages over and over again? Mail has a minimum of "50 recent messages" to download, but i hate having to delete them every time i check for new mail! why doesn't the program remember if you have already downloaded a message, and suppress any subsequent downloads???

Same issue since Mavericks.

TS3899 How do I prevent mail from deleting on the server after deleting on the phone?

When I delete mail from my iphone when using apple mail, the e-mail deletes on my phone but remains on my computer. When my co-worker deletes mail from her iphone it is getting deleted from her work computer (and the server). I have compared settings on our phone and everything appears the same. How do we stop mail from deleting from the server when she deletes mail from her phone?
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POP or IMAP?
With POP, this is the conventional way to use it. You download messages and doing so deletes them. Alternatively you can arrange to leave copies on the server for other email clients to be able to see them. The setting to do this can be found under '''Tools|Account Settings|{select account}|Server Settings'''.
With IMAP, you're supposed to store messages on the server. If you want to remove them from the server, move them to the Local Folders account in Thunderbird.

How do I prevent Mail from automatically sending iCal acceptances?

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It looks like the only way to address this problem is by using this 3rd party software:
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http://www.nhoj.co.uk/icalreplychecker/
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Same issue since Mavericks.

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Example 1
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There are certainly many ways of organizing things so that Mail never has to deal with multiple accounts and duplicate messages (separate user accounts, separate computers, separate mail clients, etc., etc). That's just not what I was asking. I'd like to know how to fix Mail's behavior when it does have to deal with multiple accounts and duplicate messages.
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Thanks!

Hmm.. probably not.
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Good luck.

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Hi
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Hey all!
When I send someone a long web link that is pretty long, Mail breaks it into several lines and at the end the user cannot use this link right away, he needs to "assemble it by parts" first.
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Also you could use tinyurl - this is exactly what its designed for.
ie
Turn this URL:
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its essential.

How do I prevent Mail from downloading messages from IMAP?

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