Mac Mail downloads all my old messages with IMAP

Hi,
How do I stop this happening? I just want to download messages from now onwards. But I'm getting thousands of old emails downloading to my inbox and no way to stop it seemingly.
I'm on Mac OSX 10.6.8, using Mail 4.6. I have an @hotmail.com email account.
Second option would be to somehow delete these messages once they've all downloaded, but without deleting them from the hotmail server... any ideas??
Many thanks.

Though the original question is old, people are still viewing it when they need help with the problem.
I found this possible solution:
Apple Mail - Removing Messages from the Server
To have your Apple Mail remove messages from the server when you check mail (using POP), you will follow these steps:
After opening the Apple Mail program, click on "Mail" from the menu at the top.
Click on "Preferences"
Click on "Accounts" (the @ symbol)
If you have more than one mail account, select the one you want to work with
Click "Advanced"
Make sure the box next to "Remove copy from server after retrieving a message" is checked.
You can also remove messages currently saved on the server by clicking the "Remove now" button.
Click "Save" when you close the Preference pane
Using "Remove copy from server after retrieving a message" will make sure your messages are always downloaded to your Mac, and prevent your mailbox quota from being exceeded.

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Mac mail received all my old mails

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how can i do that.
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Though the original question is old, people are still viewing it when they need help with the problem.
I found this possible solution:
Apple Mail - Removing Messages from the Server
To have your Apple Mail remove messages from the server when you check mail (using POP), you will follow these steps:
After opening the Apple Mail program, click on "Mail" from the menu at the top.
Click on "Preferences"
Click on "Accounts" (the @ symbol)
If you have more than one mail account, select the one you want to work with
Click "Advanced"
Make sure the box next to "Remove copy from server after retrieving a message" is checked.
You can also remove messages currently saved on the server by clicking the "Remove now" button.
Click "Save" when you close the Preference pane
Using "Remove copy from server after retrieving a message" will make sure your messages are always downloaded to your Mac, and prevent your mailbox quota from being exceeded.

How do i stop Mail from downloading all my old messages without deleting them

Hello there,
    i've just bought a new 13 inch macbook pro, and i'm very happy with it. Being sort of new to apple i still have some problems though.
the main one concerns mail:   How do I prevent my laptop from downloading thousands of old messages i had stored on my gmail account?
let me be clearer: i set mail up and it instantly started downloading tons of old messages that i don't want stored on my mac, since it only has 128gb storage, but i'd still like to be able to look for them in case I needed to. so i don't want to permanently erase them, get rid of them here to save some space.
is that possible? and if yes how?
I also have an other problem with Mail and it's the fact that gmail doesn't let me send pages files...it says it could be a dangerous file so it stops me.
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Csound1 wrote:
disguise wrote:
Sounds to me like your using iCloud to sync mail - but you don't want mail sync'd.
System Preferences -> iCloud
uncheck Mail
The OP is using Gmail, not iCloud.
How do I prevent my laptop from downloading thousands of old messages i had stored on my gmail account?
Unchecking Mail will do nothing at all.
And as Gmail is an Imap account it will download all mail in the account to the client.
If this is unwanted behaviour use a different email system (a POP system) or remove the mail from the Gmail server.
Gmail can be configured as POP or IMAP

Mail downloading TONS of old messages. HELP!

yikes.
on a brand new macbook pro,
just logged into a wireless network at the hotel, clicked 'get mail', then out of nowhere mail starts trying to download 22,000 emails.
these are all older messages.... i've got remove from server already checked so no idea why this would happen.
rebuilt the mailbox but its still doing it.
HELP.
suggestions?
Message was edited by: dconstrukt
Message was edited by: dconstrukt

From what you describe, this is normal. Mail can only get messages that are on the server, so the fact that it's downloading old ones means that you left them on the server. You may have the option to delete retrieved mail set now in Mail, but until it retrieves all those old messages, that can't happen.
If you have access to the account via webmail, you can stop downloading with Mail, login to the webmail account and delete all the old messages, leaving only the new ones, then let Mail retrieve those.
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Mac mail won't load old messages!

Hi!
I've been trying to set up my mail, but the account will only load up to 106 messages, though the 'incoming messages' bar says something around '506 of 628' messages incoming. Is there anyway to get them back? I've tried the rebuild option but it does absolutely nothing. I managed to get 400 to load, by fiddling with servers, and then clicked rebuild to get the rest and it took it back to 106! Please help, I'm not very good with tech language but I desperately need the old messages back!
Also the mail I'm trying to recover is not a gmail/yahoo or anything, it is linked to my personal website which is hosted on TSO. I've tried using IMAP, POP, and turning off ssl but to no avail!
Thanks,
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I'm experiencing similar problems, inbox empties as soon as I open a message (I still can send/receives messages. Spent 1 hour with AT&T and Apple customer service; all the help they gave was "delete the account", which did not do anything...it reminded me (not in a good way) of the days of frequent MS Windows crashes and all the help MS would provide was "just restart your computer.." very frustrating so far.
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I've been mulling this over overnight and wanted to follow up.
The only thing I can think of is if your email is set up using the older POP technology, you could do this one of two ways:
1/ migrate your mail across, then from within the mail app, delete whats there (ensure your delete from server settings are switched to off - if only for this section). This will tell the server that you've already downloaded the existing mail and it ill only download new emails. IMPORTANT: this will only work for a POP Account.
2/ Again, POP only but you could alternatively redownload all the mail, and perform the #1 steps.
As for IMAP accounts, these by nature Sync with the server, so I think you're firmly out of luck.
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In that case, you should definitely post your question here
https://discussions.apple.com/community/mac_os/mac_os_x_v10.6_snow_leopard
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stu19 wrote:
Hi,
I use an imap server at work, but am changing jobs. I'd like to be able to retain my old emails (@old.address) and folders in Mail and to integrate my new messages (@new.address, IMAP) into these folders. Is there a way to do this, or am I just going to have to download all my old emails to folders 'On my Mac' and have a new set of folders for my new account?
that's what you'll have to do. once the new IMAP account is set up you can move those local folders to that imap account.
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under POP download click "enable POP for mail that arrives from now on"
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erase your email account
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Sorry, couldn't resist!
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Mac Mail downloads all my old messages with IMAP

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