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delete folders in Mail that I have created

How do I permanently delete folders I have created in Mail on my IMac 2l.5. Won't work in Mail.Used to be able to do this in Finder (>Go>Gotofolder~/Library...) but cannot get that to work in Catalina. Thanks for any help.


iMac 21.5″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Jul 1, 2020 12:40 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jul 1, 2020 1:02 PM

From support.apple.com:

"Delete mailboxes

WARNING: Deleting a mailbox permanently deletes the mailbox and its contents (including other mailboxes), 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.

  1. In the Mail app  on your Mac, select a mailbox in the Mail sidebar.
  2. Choose Mailbox > Delete Mailbox.
  3. If you have problems deleting a mailbox on the server for an IMAP account, contact the provider of your account.

When you delete a Smart Mailbox, the messages it displayed remain in their original locations.

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

5 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jul 1, 2020 1:02 PM in response to chkinlaf

From support.apple.com:

"Delete mailboxes

WARNING: Deleting a mailbox permanently deletes the mailbox and its contents (including other mailboxes), 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.

  1. In the Mail app  on your Mac, select a mailbox in the Mail sidebar.
  2. Choose Mailbox > Delete Mailbox.
  3. If you have problems deleting a mailbox on the server for an IMAP account, contact the provider of your account.

When you delete a Smart Mailbox, the messages it displayed remain in their original locations.

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

Jul 1, 2020 1:01 PM in response to chkinlaf

Were these mail folders created on your email providers' email servers or locally under the "On My Mac" header in the Mail app? If the latter, you should have two choices to delete any mail folders that you created:

  1. Using the Mail app, simply select the appropriate folder under the "On My Mac" header, and delete it.
  2. Alternatively, using the Finder, go to: ~/Library/Mail/Vx/, where "x" is "7" for macOS Catalina. You should find a number of folders there. One of them should contain the On My Mac folders.

delete folders in Mail that I have created

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