Mail (Yosemite): Create or delete mailboxes

Tip: If you want to organize messages without moving them around, use Smart Mailboxes.

Create a mailbox

  1. Choose Mailbox > New Mailbox.

  2. Click the Location pop-up menu, then choose where to create the mailbox.

    Mailboxes created in On My Mac are local, meaning you can access them only on your Mac. Mailboxes created on your email account’s mail server can be accessed on any computer where you use the account.

  3. Type a name for the mailbox, then click OK.

In a work environment, public read-only mailboxes may be available in your email account. For example, a public folder may be used to provide information for all users of a company email system. You can’t create mailboxes within or save messages to these read-only mailboxes. To find out how to post messages to the mailbox, ask your email administrator.

To reorder the mailboxes for an email account in the Mail sidebar, drag a mailbox to a new location within the account.

Delete a mailbox

You can delete mailboxes in the Mail sidebar.

WARNING: Deleting a mailbox permanently deletes the mailbox and its contents, and can’t be undone. If you use Time Machine to back up files on your Mac, you can use it to recover previous versions of a deleted mailbox.

Select the mailbox, then choose Mailbox > Delete Mailbox.

  • If a dialog appears saying you can’t delete a mailbox, you may not have permission to delete it, or there may be network or server-related reasons.

    To check your permissions for a mailbox, go to the Finder, then hold down the Option key while you choose Go > Library. In the Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes folder, select the mailbox, then choose File > Get Info. Click the triangle next to Sharing & Permissions to see the permissions for the mailbox.

  • If you have problems deleting an IMAP mailbox on the server, contact the provider of your email account.

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 displayed remain in their original locations.

When you delete a mailbox that contains other mailboxes, messages in the top-level mailbox are deleted and the mailbox icon in the Mail sidebar turns white; the other mailboxes and their messages still exist. If you delete a white mailbox, all of the mailboxes and messages it contains are deleted.

If you use the Finder to delete a mailbox, the change may not appear in Mail.

Import or export mailboxes
Rename mailboxes
Keep mailboxes from getting too big
Last Modified: Feb 3, 2015
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