Delete emails and manage storage in Mail on Mac

1. Go to the Mail app on your Mac.

2. Select messages or email conversations in the list.

3. Click in the Mail toolbar or press the Delete key.

   All of the messages in a conversation are deleted.

If you delete a mailbox, all of the messages in the mailbox are deleted. Messages in Smart mailboxes remain in your inbox.

You can search for a set of messages to delete. For example, you can search for messages dated August 1 through September 5, 2021 by entering “date:8/01/21-9/05/21” in the Mail search field. Or, search for messages from a specific person by entering a name in the search field. Then select and delete the found messages.

1. Go to the Mail app on your Mac.

2. Do one of the following:

   • Choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items, then choose an account.

   • In the Mail sidebar, Control-click a Trash mailbox, then choose Erase Deleted Items.

You can set the “Erase deleted messages” option in Mail settings to have Mail permanently erase deleted messages at a specified time. See Change Mailbox Behaviors settings.

Depending on how you set options in Mail settings, you can view and retrieve email messages after you delete them.

1. Go to the Mail app on your Mac.

2. Choose Mail > Settings, then click Accounts.

3. Select an account, then click Mailbox Behaviors.

4. Click the pop-up menu next to Trash Mailbox, then choose an option.

   • If a mailbox is specified: You can view deleted messages in the Trash mailbox until they’re permanently erased. To retrieve a deleted message, drag it from the Trash mailbox to another mailbox.

   • If None is specified: Deleted messages are removed and aren’t available in the Trash mailbox.

5. Click the pop-up menu under “Erase deleted messages,” then choose when to permanently delete messages in the Trash mailbox.

6. Click a Trash mailbox in the mail sidebar to view deleted messages.

If your email account exceeds the storage limits set by the account’s provider, you can take some actions in Mail to free up space on the account’s mail servers.

1. Go to the Mail app on your Mac.

2. Do any of the following:

   • Delete large messages or messages with attachments, or move the messages to a mailbox on your Mac.

     Tip: To quickly identify large messages, choose View > Sort By > Size.

   • Delete attachments that you saved. Choose Message > Remove Attachments. The message remains in the mailbox and Mail indicates attachments were manually removed.

     For IMAP accounts, be sure to download the attachments first—attachments are deleted from the mail server and can’t be retrieved.

   • Empty your Trash mailbox. Messages you recently deleted are in the Trash mailbox but haven’t yet been removed from the mail server. Choose Mailbox > Erase Deleted Items, then choose to remove them from all accounts or a specific account.

   • For POP accounts, reduce the amount of time that copies of messages and attachments remain on the mail server before being removed. Choose Mail > Settings, click Accounts, select the account, click Advanced, then choose a different option from the pop-up menu below “Remove copy from server after retrieving a message.”

Here are suggestions to try if mailboxes are so big you can’t find messages, or you want to reduce the amount of storage space that Mail uses on your Mac.

1. Go to the Mail app on your Mac.

2. Do any of the following:

   • Delete messages you don’t need anymore, especially those with large attachments.

   • Save attachments to your Mac, then delete the attachments from messages.

   • Create more mailboxes to organize your messages. For example, if you have messages related to travel plans, you could create a mailbox called Travel and move travel-related messages to that mailbox.

   • Use Rules to automatically move incoming messages from your Inbox to other mailboxes. For example, you could create a rule to move travel-related messages to the Travel mailbox as they arrive. You can also use rules to process messages already in mailboxes.

1. Go to the Mail app on your Mac.

2. Select one or more messages or email conversations.

3. Choose how you want to save the messages.

   • Save messages as files: Choose File > Save As, then choose a format and location.

     Rich Text Format retains formatting (such as bold and italics), but Plain Text does not. Raw Message Source saves a single message in .eml format.

   • Save messages as PDFs: Choose File > Export as PDF.

You can also save messages in .eml format by dragging them to your desktop. If you drag a conversation, the messages it contains are saved as separate files.