Can't delete a mailbox

I have one user who tried copying over a bunch of mail folders from their old POP account in Apple Mail that were stored locally.
The user copied a bunch of them that were successful, but there were some that used illegal characters such as apostrophe's and exclamation points. The illegal characters must have stopped Mail.app from copying onto the mail server and created what seemed to be some incomplete copied over folders.
I went through his mailboxes for him, manually renamed them, and then went to delete his IMAP folders to start the transfer over again. There ended up being one folder that couldn't be deleted, and I can't for the life of me figure it out. Any help would be greatly appreciated as well.
This is what I have done so far... I started out trying to rename the folder and recreate it since it seems like it doesn't actually exist, but none of my attempts at doing anything from Apple Mail worked. Then I ssh'd into the server and added an admin user to the Cyrus. Next I used 'cyradm' to connect to the localhost and I set the permissions of his mailbox to that newly created admin and ran a 'dm' on the mailbox. It appeared to worrk at first, but when I ran a 'lm' it still showed the mailboxes that I couldn't delete even though the root mailbox was gone...
i.e.:
Other\ Users/steven (this one was able to delete along w/ subfolders)
Other\ Users/steven/OWNER (this one had no luck at being deleted)
I have tried rebuilding the mailbox from cyradm, and at this point I've exhausted all of my knowledge on working with Cyrus.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

FYI-
cyradm and SirAdmin can be run remotely if the imap port is available.
Back to your problem
Your database could be corrupt.
First, I would try a reconstruct using the existing database. Try the reconstruct button in ServerAdmin (not just one account, but entire database), or try mailbfr -f.
But... I suspect your problem may still exist and you may need to delete/reconstruct the database. The steps I've used for this:
- Stop Mail
- Delete or backup contents of the database folder (specified in ServerAdmin)
- mailbfr -f
- mailbfr -o (might be included in the -f, wouldn't hurt if it were run again)
Both reconstructs above will reset the read/unread flags, so you may want to warn your users of this. The database delete/recreate forces the database to be rebuilt from the existing imap folders one message at a time. It's a way to start fresh. If a problematic imap folder doesn't exist in the imap folder it won't end up in the new database.
JJ

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Can't delete smart mailboxes...

I have some smart mailboxes that I can't seem to delete. I delete them, and they disappear... and then they reappear, right back in the same place.
They were created some time ago – when I was using Lion, I beleive – and I'm wondering if they are somehow corrupted.
Any ideas?

Before getting too involved on trying to fix this, start with simple things. Disable any extensions or add ons to mail and try. You could create a new user account for testing. Log into the new user account and add the mail account there and test. If it works there, then the problem lies within your user folder. We can go from there.
You could also do some simple maintenance first. Open Disk Utility and select your boot volume. Repair permissions and restart the computer and test.
You can carry the permission repair a bit further. Disk Utility only repairs global permissions. Follow the steps here to repair User Permissions.
http://www.macissues.com/2014/04/11/how-to-fix-home-folder-permissions-in-os-x/
Before doing anything, be sure you have a backup in case problems occur.

Can't delete smart mailbox

I have a number of old smart mailboxes that I've been trying to delete. When I delete them ('control-click, delete mailbox), they disappear. No error messages, etc.
About a minute later, though, they just reappear.
Any thoughts?

If you go to option two, hold down the option key while using the Finder "Go To Folder" command. Enter ~/Library/Mail/V2.
If you prefer to make your user library permanently visible, use the Terminal command found below.
http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/04/show-library-directory-in-mac-os-x-lion/
You might want to bookmark the command. I had to use it again after I installed 10.8.2. I have also been informed that if you drag the user library to Finder it will remain visible.

Can't delete a Mailbox and Can't see the message

1. I inadvertently created a mail box twice for the same e-mail. I tried to delete one of them and it acts like it's been deleted but when I close and re-open Mail it's still there? Any ideas ?
2. I have 2 e-mails waiting to be read but nothing shows on the lower portion of the window (as in Outlook Express). I tired clicking on OPEN and nothing appears. Any idea ?
Thanks in advance for the help ! Nancy

to be able to view in the preview pane, go to the bottom of your mail window, you should see a line with a dot in the middle, grab that dot and drag the line up, maybe to half way up the window or anywhere else feels comfortable for viewing, the release. you should now have the preview pane in the bottom of the window, and the email list for the mailbox you have selected.
to open an email, double click on it, and a separate window for that email will pop up.
what type of mailbox is this, for what type of account? and did yo just select the mailbox and go to mailbox>delete mailbox?
hope this helps

Can't Delete (or Rename) Unused Mailboxes

Having just upgraded to Leopard, I wanted to clean up my mail and delete two unused mailboxs. Problem is, I can't delete either mailbox. Nothing happens when I select the "Delete Mailbox" command. I can't even rename them. When I try, I get an error message telling me that "Mail was unable to rename…" Seems that once a mailbox is created it can never be deleted or renamed. Any help on this would be much appreciated.

Oops! My bad. I guess I didn't read it carefully enough.
I just copied this from Mail Help. If this doesn't work, I'm out of suggestions.
Deleting mailboxes
If you no longer need a mailbox or any of the messages it contains, you can easily delete it. Do not delete a mailbox in the Finder because the change may not appear in Mail; always use Mail to delete mailboxes.
NOTE: Deleting a mailbox permanently deletes the mailbox and its contents, and cannot be undone. If you set up Time Machine to back up files, you can use it to recover previous versions of a deleted mailbox.
Recovering mailboxes and their content
To delete a mailbox:
Select the mailbox and choose Mailbox > Delete, or Control-click the mailbox and choose Delete from the pop-up menu.
■
If a message says you can’t delete a mailbox, you may not have permission to delete a mailbox from On My Mac, or there may be network or server-related reasons.
To see your permissions for a mailbox, select the mailbox (located in the Library/Mail/Mailboxes/ folder in your home folder) and then choose File > Get Info. Click the triangle next to Sharing & Permissions to see information about the permissions for the mailbox and then make any necessary changes.
■
If you have problems deleting an IMAP mailbox on the server, contact your Internet service provider (ISP).
When you delete a mailbox, rules that were applied to the mailbox are disabled in Mail preferences.
When you delete a Smart Mailbox, the messages it contains remain in their original location.

Deleting ghost mailbox

Hi!
I have the following problem. I can’t delete a mailbox (emoze), I have tried to delete it using the Options > Settings > E-mail route but the mailbox doesn’t even appear under the [Default mailbox] list. I can see the mailbox name but instead of the mailbox icon there is a grey circular icon with a question mark. When I go into the mailbox all the messages also have a question mark but I can’t open any of them. I have noticed that after updating the phone software and before restoring my messages the mailbox is not there it only appears after I restore my messages. And lastly I have searched the emoze website without any luck.
Any suggestions as to how I can remove this mailbox as I am no longer using emoze?
:robotsad:

Hi - I have had to delete and recreate my mailboxes once since I had the phone as it stopped syncing them.
When deleting I did have a problem that something was active. Make sure any connection / destination is turned off, widgets set to offline mode and turn phone off, then on again.
Worked for me.

Deleting Multiple Mailboxes All At One Time

When I bought an iMac, the Apple Store transferred (imported) a large number of email messages and from my PC to my new iMac and placed them in mailboxes. I no longer need the imported mailboxes and their content. How can I delete multiple mailboxes (and their content) all at once vs. one by one?

Hi rahimac & welcome to the forums...
Those individual boxes are in this location:
~yourUserNameHome/Library/Mail
If you're comfortable poking around in there you can sort and then delete. Close MAIL first and when you're done, they should be gone the next time you open it.
I don't recommend this as a casual approach, however, so if you have any hesitation, just delete one by one inside MAIL instead.
Make sure to have a backup ...and good luck in any case.

My dotMac mailboxes are duplicated - how can I delete the duplicates?

I see that problems rather like this have appeared in this forum but mine doesn't seem to be quite the same. I have two locations each with a Mac running Tiger (now 10.4.9) and I have a .mac account: I use Mac Mail as a mail client. One of my machines had an unrecoverable disk crash and the HD had to be replaced. I then reloaded Tiger and did all the updates etc, and then tried to recover my mail: I only tried to recover my .Mac mail, not my other POP accounts to start with. This worked. Then I went on to re-introduce my POP accounts from other ISPs (I have a number of these). I made some mistake in the way I chose to Sync the .Mac mail (I think I chose 'merge'). The mailboxes looked fine on my recovered system, but when I went to my other location and started up Mail, I got two copies of the whole .mac mail system - all the mailboxes and messages shown in the left column of Mail. There doesn't seem to be any way of deleting one of the copies. I also get copies of the POP accounts, and if I try to modify one of them in the Mail Preferences Accounts pane (so as to disable the 'shadow' account for example), I get messages like
"Invalid Directory
The account path /Users/graham/Library/Mail/[email protected] is already being used by the account "XYZ at Blueyonder" "
(I have modified the user name for privacy reasons).
How can I restore stuff to normal, an in particular how can I safely get my mailboxes back to a single representation of each one? I should say that I'm also getting the dreaded duplicate mails problem, but I would like to tackle one issue at a time.

You’re welcome.
You should also be able to fix the problem on the current location by re-creating the file where account settings are stored and resetting sync data in the opposite direction:
1. If you have a .Mac account and .Mac synchronization of Mail data is enabled either in Mail > Preferences > General or in System Preferences > .Mac, disable it before proceeding.
2. Quit Mail if it’s running.
3. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something goes wrong while trying to solve the problem. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is locally stored.
4. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate com.apple.mail.plist and move it to the Desktop (to be deleted if this fixes the problem).
5. Open Mail. You’ll have to set up your non-.Mac accounts from scratch all over again. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don’t. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in ~/Library/Mail/ when done.
6. You’ll have to re-configure most of your settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it’s enabled.
7. You may also need to re-install or re-enable any Mail plug-ins you have installed for Mail to recognize them.
8. As a side effect of re-creating com.apple.mail.plist, Mail might rename Outbox (which is where messages waiting to be sent are stored) to Delivered. The name of that mailbox is actually a misnomer, as it would contain messages (if any) that couldn’t be delivered for some reason. You can delete that mailbox if you wish.
9. If the problem is fixed now and .Mac synchronization of Mail data was enabled at the beginning, enable it again, go to System Preferences > .Mac > Advanced, click Reset Sync Data, and choose the appropriate options to reset the Mail data stored on the .Mac server with the data locally stored on the computer, i.e. sync data must flow from the computer to the .Mac server.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the folder path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the folder path there.

When I try to delete an email, I get a message which says "The message could not be moved to the mailbox trash". How can I delete messages?

When I try to delete an email, I get a message whih says "The message connot be sent to the mailbox Trash. How can I delet messages?

Try going into Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Then select the account on the right-hand side of that screen, select Account, then Advanced, Deleted Mailbox, and under On The Server tap the 'Trash' folder (or whatever it is called by yor provider) so that it gets a tick against it - then come out of that series of popups by tapping on the relevant buttons at the top of them and then see if you can delete emails

Can't delete mail on phone, message says unable to move message the message could not be moved to the mailbox trash

can't delete mail on phone, message says, Unable to move message The message could not be moved to the mailbox trash.

Delete your mail account/s and re-add them.
This is what worked for me but I've read about other solutions that have worked for some people as well:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=612773

TS3274 I have thousands of email messages in my ipad mailbox that I can't delete en masse. I can delete a few at a time, but this would take forever???

I have thousands of email messages in my ipad mailbox that I can't delete en masse. I can delete a few at a time, but this would take forever???

Contact htem? No, I wouldn't think so, I'm not familier with fuse.net. Most ISPs adn email providers have web pages that can be used to acces your account settings and email. That may provide a means of selecting multiple emails and deleting them (but probably not 22,000 at a time).

Why can't I delete added mailboxes on my iPad mini since iOS 8 update? Every time I try to delete an old mailbox that I added it boots me right out of mIl completely. I want to clean up and get rid of old unused mailboxes?

why can't I delete added mailboxes on my iPad mini after the ios8 update?

The mail app is crashing on you for some reason. Close the mail app and reset your iPad.
In order to close apps, you have to drag the app up from the multitasking display. Double tap the home button and you will see apps lined up going left to right across the screen. Swipe to get to the app that you want to close and then swipe "up" on the app preview thumbnail to close it.
Reset the iPad by holding down on the sleep and home buttons at the same time for about 10-15 seconds until the Apple Logo appears - ignore the red slider if it appears on the screen - let go of the buttons. Let the iPad start up.
If that doesn't help, you can also try resetting all settings. You will not lose any data, but most of the device settings will have to be entered in the settings app again. Settings>General>Reset>Reset all Settings.

How can I delete multiple emails in the mailbox in one time?

How can I delete multiple emails in one time in the mailbox?

When inside a folder, listing your emails, tap the Edit button, then select as many emails as you want to then tap trash.

Can't Delete/Rename Smart Mailbox

I don't seem to be able to rename or delete smart mailboxes in mail. I control-click to choose Rename or Delete, I can temporarily change the name or remove the mailbox, but after quitting and relaunching mail the old smart mailbox with the old name is still there. Happens on both my laptop and desktop, both running 10.9.2.

Lisa,
Open the Inbox of only the main account, click on Mailbox in the menubar, and choose Rebuild. During Rebuild all messages will disappear from the list of messages, but then will reappear when Rebuild finishes.
You may want to make a backup copy of the Mail folder, for peace of mind before doing this. In the Finder, open Home/Library and find the Mail folder (Home is the folder that opens when you click on the Icon of a House in the Sidebar to the Finder window, btw), Control-click over the Mail folder, choose Duplicate, and then drag the resulting copy to the Desktop strictly for temporary backup.
Have you ever used the command to Erase Deleted Message, btw?
Ernie

Can't delete certain emails from Mail. Instead, I get the message "An error occurred while moving messages to the mailbox, etc."

Can't delete certain emails from Mail. Instead, I get the message "An error occurred while moving messages to the mailbox, etc." The problem appears randomly.

I had the same problem, and it was solved by going to the Mailbox menu and selecting "rebuild."

Can't delete a mailbox

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