Mail (El Capitan): Create or delete mailboxes
You can create mailboxes and move messages to them to help keep your email organized. For example, you could create a Book Club mailbox, with mailboxes inside it for each author or book you read.
Create a mailbox
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Choose Mailbox > New Mailbox.
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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 this computer. Mailboxes created on your email account’s mail server can be accessed on any computer where you use the account.
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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.
Select the mailbox, then choose Mailbox > Delete Mailbox.
If you have problems deleting a mailbox on the server for an IMAP account, contact the provider of your 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.