40 GB large folder in User/Library/Mail

Hi, my 2 accounts which has aproximately on gmail.com about 2,5 GBbytes has in my computer crazy 40 GBytes?
Why the ****?
I'm using IMAP, all folders are set properly, no folders which are not in gmail accounts are in my MAIL application!!!
I hope, that this will read somebody from Aplle, because this is really huge mystake in your almost flawless EMAIL client!!!
BTW (My Macbook Pro Unibody, which costed 59 000 CZK. It is Equal to 3200 Dolars (Yes in Europe is Apple really expensive) and I got 250 Gbytes big HardDrive!!
So I'm really ****** know, because for some stupid reason MAIL Application gets one quarter of my drive?!! BTW, I'm not begginer with MAC (I'm Mac possitive from Tiger and this is my 3rd Laptop, but I guess that could be the last ONE!!
BTW: I know I could remove my accounts, erase folders and create accounts again, but Why?
Message was edited by: Maila87

Hi, my 2 accounts which has aproximately on gmail.com about 2,5 GBbytes has in my computer crazy 40 GBytes?
Have you looked inside the Mail folder to see what is taking up so much space?
I hope, that this will read somebody from Aplle, because this is really huge mystake in your almost flawless EMAIL client!!!
1) Nobody from Apple is reading these boards... these forums are user-to-user forums.
2) Why do you feel this is somehow Apple's fault when you don't know what the cause is?
BTW, I'm not begginer with MAC (I'm Mac possitive from Tiger and this is my 3rd Laptop, but I guess that could be the last ONE!!
Good luck not having problems with that other system... especially if, at the first sign of trouble, you throw a little hissy fit and throw around a bunch of blame.
A more productive approach would be to start troubleshooting. The first thing I would do is to see what is in the Mail folder and what is taking up the space. A good tool that will help with this is [OmniDiskSweeper|http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnidisksweeper>, which will show you sizes of stuff on your hard drive. It tells me that my Mail folder is 234.4 MB. (I have six accounts, including a GMail account.) Looking inside, OmniDiskSweeper tells me most of the space is taken up by the Mailboxes folder, and then I can look in there and see which mailboxes are taking up the most space.
You also may be the cause of your own problems. If you have set Mail to not delete sent messages and to not store them on the server, and you have sent a lot of messages with large attachments, they'll still be sitting in your Sent box, taking up space.

Similar Messages

Email account folder in /user/library/mail is much larger than full mailbox archive for the same account

Hi,
I recently changed jobs and want to archive all email (with attachments in place) for the associated work email account. I also plan to remove the old work email account (IMAP) from the list of active mailboxes in Apple Mail. I don't want Spotlight searches for personal or current work email cluttered with results from my old job.
I have created an archive of the old work account by doing Mailbox Archive for all of the IMAP folders for that account. The entire archive is 1.7GB in size.
Before I delete the old account from my Mail preferences, I want to make sure that I have really exported everything. So I've compared the size of the new archive folder with that of the mailbox folder in users/.../Library/Mail for that same account. That latter is 8.7GB in size. Why the enormous difference?
Can the difference be attributed to lack of compression and indices (which would be rebuilt if I import the archive) for spotlight searches? Am I missing something in the archive that I created?
I've created a zip of the system folder. Can I easily restore this at a latter time if I delete the email account from my Mail preferences?
Is there a better way to achieve my objective?
Mitoids

I did find a "Recovered Messages" by looking in the the Mail client under "On My Mac" (I don't normally use that feature). One message with an accicental 99MB attachment that I never sent, was recovered ~60times, consuming 5.7GB.
I deleted all of those, but the size ~/Library/Mail/xxxaccount folder did not change much. It is still much larger than the Archive I created. BTW, this is an IMAP account that was syncing with corporate GMail.

Can't access user/library/Mail backup on Time Machine

I just reformatted my HD in the Mavericks fashion. When asked, I did NOT opt to start a new Time Machine backup series for fear of overwriting my mailboxes and contents from yesterday. So now my Time Machine menu item is greyed out and, since "Library" is an invisible file on the Time Machine disc, I can't get at my mailboxes to drag them over manually. The Library folder simply isn't available. So how do I restore my mailboxes to the new OS? I can access the User/Library/Mail folder by using keystrokes (Go to ~/CH/Library), but it does no good because it's *Today's* folder and there's nothing in it. How do I get at the actual backups from YESTERDAY'S User/Library/Mail folder?

Old Toad: You're on the right track, but it looks to be more complicated than even I thought. But thanks for referring me to that set of solutions. I think it worked, in that my latest good backup is now associated with my current OS. The brick wall I'm hitting again is that all I want to back up from the TM drive is my user/library folder, containing mailboxes. I can't even see it normally without holding down Option while hitting the Go menu item, so locating it for the purposes of Time Machine is tricky, if it's possible at all. One problem queering the do is that there are traces of malware on the backups, and I want to avoid re-installing them with my data. They were the reason I reformatted in the first place. Thanks for sending me to a promising source of info; I've still got Applecare, so I'll call them tomorrow AM.

I need to access one folder in user library folder from my time machine backup......but it won't show a library folder

I need to access one folder in user library folder from my time machine backup......but the backup disk won't show show a library folder.
Pressing option-go only directs me to the current library folder in my hard drive. I have opened up the saved disk image and need to copy one folder and put it into my current library. Trying to restore using time capsule won't let me into the user library either......
thanks in advance for any help
christos

The Saved Application State folder is where Lion stores all the information required for its resume feature to function as it does. As you are looking for a specific saved game folder it will not be in the Saved Application State folder. This folder was not present in Snow Leopard so wouldn't be present on your backup previous to the Lion install.
The game saves you're looking for will most likely be located in the Application Support or Preferences folder.
Hope this helps
J.C

Is it advisable to MOVE contents of "Users/~/Library/Mail/V2" in the Finder instead of from within Apple Mail "ON MY MAC" left pane?

Is it advisable to MOVE some folders/mailboxes within "Users/~/Library/Mail/V2" by drag and drop in the Finder instead of moving them from within the Apple Mail "ON MY MAC" left pane?
Any drawback or problem or danger about it? In case of doing it, should I do it with Apple Mail open or closed?
For more details about why I want to do it, please see:
How to MOVE folders and mailboxes from Localhost into On My Mac?
https://discussions.apple.com/message/25004039#25004039
Thanks.

Someone knows? Thanks.

Where is user/library/mail folder in mountain lion?

Hello,
I bought a new macbook pro and now I want to transfer some mail messages received and stored on another computer.
I wanted to put them in the Library/Main folder within my user folder, but if I open the User folder, there is no Library folder !
the only Library folder on this computer is within Macintosh HD, and that doesnt have a mail section.
I can use the Mail program just fine with mail coming in now, but where is that mail stored??
thanks in advance

in Finder, hold down the Option key while clicking on the Go menu and your users Library will appear...

I deleted preference file and now cant find any mail in user/library/mail/ folder!

I actually overwrote the preference file with an older one, because mail was having major issues sending and receiving and other password related wierdness...it actually made my host block my ip when I tried to reset the mail settings and test...meaning I wasnt able to see my website anymore...my administrater for the hosting reset it now...but its kinda freaking me out!
anyways the major issue now is the fact that after I overwrote the mail preference file and reopened mail everything was different...somewhat what I expected since I changed the preferences...but I was confident that I could easily go to the mail folder in library and retrieve all inbox, sent, draft, and trashed folders of messages...nothing was there!!!
Has anyone experenced this?
I didnt look in the mail folder before changing the preferences, so I dont know if they were their at all...ever?
but the interface was showing all files, sent and recieved deleted etc...is it possible that it was only setup somehow on a server, like using imap or a cloud?
I recently got this computer (sry I should have mentioned: Macbook, snow leopard 10.6.8, using mail 4.6 i think)
SO maybe the dude I bought it from somehow had it set to use a server based repository for mail?? is there a way to know...
I fiddled with computers a fair bit and feel pretty confident with OS related issues, but this is way out of my league!
anyone?
all ideas appreciated!
Thanks
Ja-Flow

That does not delete anything on your Mac - it simplt makes a backup on teh external drive -- http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1427
If you launch TM you get a finder looking window with times vertically on the right - in that window do you see yur iPhoto library (by default it is in your pictures folder)
LN

Can I delete a huge file in my Log folder of User Library?

Yosemite: Mac Book Pro retina mid 2012
User folder->Library (71 GB!) -> Logs folder (29 GB) -> made of mostly of this file "PDApp 02-15-2015 13-43-33.log" at 28 GB.
Is this something I can delete?
Looking to find some more space on hard drive which I think is solid state memory...

Click here for information.
(122540)

Invisible junk in ~/Library/Mail folder?

I have two imap mail accounts, one with .mac and another. Inside my folder ~/Library/Mail, one of the folders for the non-.mac account is quite large, ~325 MB, even though:
a) there is not much mail in any folder of the account, and
b) the only visible contents of the folder (2 folders, INBOX and INBOX.imapmbox) only add up to 11.5 MB.
Rebuilding the mailbox from the Mail application doesn't help. There seems to be some invisible junk in there, and probably elsewhere in the Mail folder. The number and hierarchy of folders in the Mail folder is very confusing. I have maintained these accounts through a lot of system changes. How do I clean it up and get rid of the unnecessary stuff?
Thanks,
Jim

b) the only visible contents of the folder
(2 folders, INBOX and INBOX.imapmbox) only
add up to 11.5 MB.
Is the INBOX.imapmbox located within the INBOX folder?
Regardless, I don't believe having both folders is normal - you should have an INBOX.imapmbox only.
Try the following.
Quit the Mail.app first and using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail. Copy the Mail folder and place the copy on the Desktop for backup purposes.
Using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail > Envelope Index. Delete the Envelope Index file and in addition, delete the .Mac account named folder and the account named folder for the IMAP account and empty the Trash.
Launch Mail and you will be prompted to import all mailboxes available within the Mail folder at Home > Library > Mail.
Select OK and allow the import process to complete. This isn't really importing anything but replacing the Envelope Index file and re-indexing all messages. In addition, a new .Mac account named folder and a new account named folder for the IMAP account will be re-creating automatically along with new .imapmbox folders for the server stored mailboxes. All messages available on the server for both accounts will be re-synchronized with the server.
If this is successful and resolves the problem and after confirming all messages are available, you can delete the copy of the Mail folder placed on the Desktop.

Main in inbox and sent folder gone after recreating mail account in prefs

I called my ISP when I was getting outgoing mail server error messages. Their tech person said that I had to recreate that email account. They had me delete the existing account then basically make the account again. Expletives deleted. The result for this brilliant advice was that all the mail in my inbox (800 messages) and sent mail copies (maybe 4000 messages) is gone. Apparently over written by a new account with the same name as the old one. I didn't expect that the mail messages themselves would be removed, just the account settings. Is there any sort of trash place that I might be able to recover them from? I've checked the obvious places in myuseraccount>library>mail.

Hello David.
Your ISP gave you some not so good advice without being familiar with the Mail.app account and associated mailbox filing structure at the Finder level. Not good news but don't shoot the messenger.
Before deleting an account in Tiger Mail, the following warning message is provided:
Are you sure you want to remove the (account type here) account “XXXXXXXXXX”?
This will permanently delete the account setup information, mailboxes, and messages from your computer. Copies of messages on the mail server, if they exist, are not affected.
This is usually ignored or not completely understood but is based on the Mail.app filing structure so now the long winded answer for the reason.
Many other email clients utilize a single large database which is not dependent on individual account and associated mailbox filing.
When creating an account in Mail, an account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account) is created in the Mail folder at Home > Library > Mail using the Finder.
For POP type accounts, the following mailbox (mbox) folders are created within the account named folder when the function is used by the account: INBOX.mbox, Drafts.mbox, Sent Messages.mbox, Deleted Messages.mbox and Junk.mbox (when Junk mail is set to automatic). The mbox folders within the account named folder represent the account named mailboxes under In, Drafts, Sent, Trash and Junk (when Junk mail is set to automatic) in the Mail.app mailboxes drawer.
When deleting an account in Mail, the account named folder at Home > Library > Mail is deleted at that time and as the warning message indicates, the associated account mailboxes within the account named folder are also deleted. You must select OK after the warning message appears.
It would be preferable for the account named folder to be moved to the hard drive Trash can which requires an additional step to delete but this is not what occurs.
To have any hope of recovering your data, you need to immediately stop using your system and then purchase a copy of a recovery tool such as Tech Tool Pro (Micromat) or Data Rescue (Prosoft Engineering), both of which have data recovery tools. I've not used Data Rescue, but I've seen reports that it recovers files that the others cannot, so it might be your best hope. The chances generally aren't really good even so, but short of sending your drive to a data recovery service (expensive), such utilities are your only hope.
Note that the more you use your system before you attempt recovery, the more likely it is that the system will overwrite the sections of the drive where the data you want to recover is stored, rendering it unrecoverable by any means. You should therefore stop using the system completely until you get and try to use one of the file recovery tools.
This also emphasizes the importance of maintaining a regular backup of the Mail folder and other important data.

Can''t see inbox.mbox file in user library

For some reason, I can't see a .mbox file for my inbox when I look in my user library Mail folder. I can see a junk.mbox; I can see a deleted messages.mbox, but no inbox.mbox (or sent.mbox, for that matter). Can someone tell me where those messages live in the library? They must be somewhere, but I can't seem to find them. I am about to migrate to a new Mac Pro, and want to make sure everything gets to the new machine. I am currently using my laptop as my main machine, because my aging dual-867 mhz. MDD machine is nursing a dying hard drive, and nothing has been able to repair it, so I stopped using it. Of course, I still have a lot of mail on the old machine, and I wanted to archive the inbox contents to a .mbox file that I could import to the new computer. Are these mailboxes different from other mail folders? Thanks for any help.

Hi and a warm welcome to the forums!
Could be many things, we should start with this...
"Try Disk Utility
1. Insert the Mac OS X Install disc that came with your computer, then restart the computer while holding the C key.
2. When your computer finishes starting up from the disc, choose Disk Utility from the Installer menu. (In Mac OS X 10.4 or later, you must select your language first.)
*Important: Do not click Continue in the first screen of the Installer. If you do, you must restart from the disc again to access Disk Utility.*
3. Click the First Aid tab.
4. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of the hard drive icon to display the names of your hard disk volumes and partitions.
5. Select your Mac OS X volume.
6. Click Repair. Disk Utility checks and repairs the disk."
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214
Then Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot.
The usual reason why updates fail or mess things up, is if Permissions are not fixed before & after every update, with a reboot... you may get a partial update when the installer finds it doesn't have Permissions to change one obscure little part of the OS, leaving you with a mix of OS versions.
Some people get away without Repairing Permissions for years, some for only days.
If Permissions are wrong before applying an update, you could get mixed OS versions, if Directory is the slightest messed up, who knows!
If many Permission are repaired, or any Directory errors are found, you may need to re-apply some the latest/biggest updates.

Mail complaining Mail folder missing in the User Library

Has anyone encountered this issue? I ran a recent update for Mountain Lion and after the update Mail could no longer find the Mail folder in the User Library even when the folder is still there and coughs up the Mail folder missing error message. I've tried rebuilding permisions even replacing the Mail Folder to no avail. can anybody help?

Bee,
Thanks for the reply. Bee, I am aware that the user library is hidden. That isn't the issue I'm afraid.
What is happening is that when I launch Mail, it coughs up an error message saing that it cannot find the Mail folder in the ~/user/library. The weird part is that the folder does exist but Mail just doesn't see it.

Library/mail folder storage very large

Background: Using an IMAP account, I switched from Outlook Express (under VM Ware on same MacBook) to Apple Mail because I wanted better archive control (generic .mbox versus proprietary MS .dbx archive format) and to get past the OE 2gb message file limitation. As an Attorney, I download every message and attachment to local drive and backup and archive.
Q1: Gmail says I am using 6.1gb out of 7.6gb with 8,146 "All Mail" messages. Apple Mail "Account Info" says I am using 6.1gb out of 7.4gb (close enough), BUT counts 14,392 messages at the same time. Why the difference in message counts?
Q2: "Get Info" for Users/.../library/Mail reports 13.24 gb, over DOUBLE the actual storage for all the messages and attachments. Why the increased hard drive space?
Q3: Mail Preferences "Accounts/Advanced" has a setting for "Compact mailboxes automatically" which is selected and greyed out so that I cannot change it. In theory this sounds good, BUT I am finding that Apple's documentation for Mail is very poor and imprecise, and I do not know what Apple "compact" actually does. In other email programs, "compact" can actually strip the message and leave only the tracking and Subject data, which I do not want to do.
What is actually happening in "compact", and why can't I changed it?
NOTE: when I setup Apple Mail, I was not sure exactly what some of the Preferences should be to get the same end result as with Outlook Express. I told Mail to sync with Gmail and let it download ALL messages and attachments, which I think it did. When I noticed the message count discrepency, I checked to see if anything was missing, but found not evidence of loss. I did a quick lookup on "Rebuild" and gave it a try. It took all night at 3megs DSL download speed and it appears from the data storage size that everything is downloaded, even thought the message counts differ. I do not know if "Rebuild" first makes a "Copy" and then duplicates the message store, and then deletes the "Copy" as cleanup, OR if it duplicates the existing data files. I have not found any duplication in the files or in the messages, but this may explain the doubling from 6.1gb to 13.24gb. Any ideas what is happening?

shonamelissa wrote:
Could you please tell me if MailAccounts.plist will hold all my IMAP messages if I back it up?
No, it will not, it's only a 2-byte file, almost nothing. That file only contains settings about your mail accounts, not the contents of the accounts.
Your mail messages are in the Library/Mail folder. If you "keep copies of messages for offline viewing" with IMAP, complete messages and attachments will be stored in that Mail folder. You can tell by looking at how the file size of that folder grows and grows, and also by digging into that folder and looking inside the account subfolders. Messages are stored as RTF files that you can open in TextEdit or Word, so that is another way to verify that the messages are indeed being stored locally as well as on the server.
To completely back up your Mail messages and configuration, you should back up the Mail folder with all your messages (after making sure you are keeping local copies), MailAccounts.plist for your account prefs, and com.apple.mail.plist for other preferences.
I don't really worry about it because both my Time Machine and clone backups are of the entire Mac. Mail is naturally included.
I think the tech note you were reading might be assuming that "Keep Copies of Messages..." is off, because that's the default. But if you turn it on, then sure you can back up the local copies of messages that are there. After you give Mail a little time to cache them all.

How can I move the ~/Library/Mail folder?

I partition my hard drives into Startup/OSX, Tools, and several data volumes. I would MUCH rather store email and attachments in a data volume, as I do all my other work product, big application caches, Music, and Pictures folders. I have tried aliases and symbolic links, and everything is ignored by Mail; no mailbox is recognized unless it is in the original location, unlike Pictures, Music, Movies, etc.
I would appreciate having control over this. Does anyone have ay tips or workarounds? I am capable of diddling plists and other config files at a fairly low level, if necessary.

If you are keeping virtually everything in your Home folder on a different volume, then perhaps a better solution is to move the entire Home folder. You can move the entire Home folder to another volume, then direct Leopard to use the Home folder in the new location.
Open Accounts preferences, click on the lock icon and authenticate. Click on your account entry then CTRL- or RIGHT-click and select Advanced Options from the contextual menu. To the right of the field labeled "Home Directory" is a button labeled "Choose." Click on the button, locate your new Home folder, select it and click on the Open button. Now restart the computer. You should now be using the relocated Home folder.
Now, if you would rather not do that then you can move the /Home/Library/Mail/ folder to the other drive. You will then need to create a soft link to this location using the Terminal command "ln -s source target" without quotes. You must first delete the original /Home/Library/Mail/ folder. So your command may look like:
ln -s /Volumes/volname/PathToNew/Mail ~/Library/Mail
The "~" tilde is the Unix shorthand for your user folder.
This should create a new folder in /Home/Library/ named Mail which is a symbolic link to the relocated Mail folder.

I am trying to back up my mail (5.1) directories but I can no longer locate them. They used to be in the user library. Would be grateful for some assistance.

I am trying to back up my mail (5.1) directories but I can no longer locate them. They used to be in the user library. Would be grateful for some assistance.

They're stil there; Apple decided to hide your Library folder. Hold the Alt/Option key while selecting Go in a Finder menubar and select Library.
Do you have other backups, made with a proper backup app? If not, that's the best way to back up your data, rather than doing it "piecemeal" via drag & drop.
You might want to review the Time Machine Tutorial, and perhaps browse Time Machine - Frequently Asked Questions.

40 GB large folder in User/Library/Mail

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for