Deleted Mail Not Going to Mail Trash or Computer Trash and Inbox and Archive are the same

Hi Little.K,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. You mentioned checking your settings. We want to make sure you checked the following since that will determine where your deleted emails go. This guidance is from Delete emails in Mail on Mac.

"View deleted emails

Whether you can view and retrieve messages after you delete them depends on how you set options in Mail settings.

1. In the Mail app on your Mac, choose Mail > Settings, then click Accounts.
2. Select an account, click Mailbox Behaviors, then check the setting for the Trash Mailbox 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."

Also, check to make sure you don't have a rule set up for deleted messages on your Mac. You can find current rules by going to Mail > Settings > Rules. Check out Use rules to manage emails you receive in Mail on Mac for further details.

Best of luck.

Also, my inbox and the archive box contain the same emails - like everything in inbox is automatically going into archive. Any suggestions on how to fix these pesky problems? Thanks

Sounds like you are using Gmail. That's how it works. Since Gmail isn't really IMAP (or POP), it doesn't work like the standard email protocols. It can "tag" a message with multiple Labels such that they appear to be in more than one folder when viewed on IMAP email clients. There is a setting in Gmail to hide certain Labels from IMAP, including All Mail which is what Apple calls "Archive" in Mail.

The Trash issue may be related to the Gmail oddities as you have to work very hard to delete a message. How do you expect them to harvest your information if you delete all of the email.

Best solution is to not use Gmail in an email client. Use the web interface as it was designed for all of the idiosyncrasies of Gmail.