Apple mail mailbox size inconsistencies

[janeserky]

Hello

I need to manage my mail box account as it's reaching its quota. When I check Apple Mail, 'get account info', it shows the total size 'currently in use' plus the individual mailbox sizes for inbox, sent, drafts etc.

My problem is that the total use = 720MB but the sum of the individual mail boxes = 150MB.

Why is there a discrepancy? How do I find out what is actually using the storage?

thanks

 

[MacInWin]

There is also a place where attachments are stored. That is probably where the rest of the storage is.

Just curious, what "quota" are you reaching? There is no quota in Apple Mail, at least on the Mac. Is your mail provider setting this limit?

 

[krs]

I just looked at the various mailboxes I have, the numbers add up fine for me.

I attached a screenshot of one of them - janeserky can you attach a screenshot of what you are seeing?

 

[janeserky]

I can't attach a screenshot as capturing an image is not working and I couldn't find a fix (honestly when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong!)

I see the following:

Currently in use: 730.8MB (0 messages)
Total available: 53.69 GB or 0 messages

Inbox - 118 messages - 54.1MB
Sent - 108 messages - 41.1MB
Bin - 94 messages - 35.5MB
Junk - 1 message - 7.9 MB
Drafts - 2 messages - 6KB

The icons for these are pictures not folders. The account is set up as IMAP.

This is not iCloud mail but an email account provided through my ISP. They are setting the quote limit.

I also have 4 other email accounts with this ISP - and their account info has the same issue ie - not summing to the total. I have also totalled the ‘currently in use’ for the 5 accounts = 177MB.

Interestingly, they all show the same amount for 'Total available' = 53.69 GB.

I have spoken with my ISP who said it’s an Apple problem; I have spoken with Apple Support who said I should change providers.

Is it possibly a problem with not including attachments as suggested by Jake?

 

[MacInWin]

My reference was to files ON YOUR Mac, not at the ISP. Your ISP doesn't, or shouldn't care how much space you take up on your own machine, they only care about what you store on theirs. So when you say "I see..." where do you see this? I seriously doubt it is Apple's problem, or yours, but the ISP's. Frankly, I would consider changing mail providers, if not ISPs, if you have options. I use a paid service called Pobox.com for my email. They spam filter for me so I don't need to have any spam filters on my own system and they allow three aliases for each account. It's not free, I pay per year, but the cost for the services is, to me, reasonable. My own ISP is useless at spam filtering, as is Apple. Everything seems to get through.

 

[krs]

I can't attach a screenshot as capturing an image is not working and I couldn't find a fix (honestly when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong!)

I see the following:

Currently in use: 730.8MB (0 messages)
Total available: 53.69 GB or 0 messages

Inbox - 118 messages - 54.1MB
Sent - 108 messages - 41.1MB
Bin - 94 messages - 35.5MB
Junk - 1 message - 7.9 MB
Drafts - 2 messages - 6KB

The icons for these are pictures not folders. The account is set up as IMAP.

This is not iCloud mail but an email account provided through my ISP. They are setting the quote limit.

I also have 4 other email accounts with this ISP - and their account info has the same issue ie - not summing to the total. I have also totalled the ‘currently in use’ for the 5 accounts = 177MB.

Interestingly, they all show the same amount for 'Total available' = 53.69 GB.

I have spoken with my ISP who said it’s an Apple problem; I have spoken with Apple Support who said I should change providers.

Is it possibly a problem with not including attachments as suggested by Jake?

For my “screen shot” I used the Grab application which I think comes with very maOS.

Launch “Grab” then select Capture > Selection and use your cursor to outline what you want to capture.

I had never looked at the Apple Account information before, but it’s pretty obvious that Apple Mail is just reporting what it retrieves from the ISP mail server.

The obvious thing that struck me immediately that the server reports 730.8 MB for 0 messages.
That makes no sense at all.

Access your mail on the ISP mail server and see what it says, the number of messages and the space used should match what you see in the Apple Account window.
If the ISP mail server shows the correct total, both in space used and number of messages, ie what you added up, then maybe there is some incompatibility there.

If you look at my numbers they all add up properly.

BTW - If your ISP provides 53.69GB of mail server space and you only use 730MB (or even less when adding the individual items),how can they say you’re reaching the quota?
You are not even remotely close.
But 53.69GB sounds totally wrong as well.
My ISP mail server provides 512MB of space or 3600 messages in my inbox (POP account)
I keep a weeks worth of messages on the server after download, then Apple Mail deletes those automatically
Right now I’m using 4% of the 512MB for 409 messages in my inbox to give you a reference.
That is 20.5MB

Do you have your mail account set up to delete messages off the server after you downloaded them?

 

[janeserky]

Re the screenshot - I have ‘screenshot.app’ in Mojave. It takes the screenshot OK but the actually picture is blank. I tried keyboard shortcuts as well but the picture was still blank. I did a quick search and apparently it’s not uncommon to get a blank screenshot as other software may interfere. I haven’t taken any screenshots for a while so it’s possible that Parallels is upsetting the process as I only recently installed it.

NB - I use Firefox and screenshots within Firefox work properly so it looks like it could be an OSX issue.


I had already checked my webmail. It only provides total usage for the account, and number of messages for each mailbox. The web mail usage is 707MB compared to 741 MB on Apple mail. The number of messages matches on a couple of the mailboxes but is different on the others (only by less than 10 or so). Even so, it doesn’t make sense why there would be a difference.

I also saw the 0 messages. I have no idea what that means either.

I deliberately moved away from POP as I wanted everything kept on the server and all my devices to show the same information. There is no option to delete off the server after download. I do have the option to delete junk and trash after a certain time period but I actually have all my accounts set to ‘never delete’ as I manage the emails - either filing as needed and then deleted, or just deleted.

I have found issues with the POP and IMAP settings in that neither actually behaved as expected eg - with POP emails were still staying on the server; IMAP was using local folders instead of the server etc. In addition to that, the ISP had its own rules how long emails were kept etc. A bit of a nightmare really ….

I was looking into swapping to iCloud mail but it seems Jake’s not a great fan of that either so I will check out Pobox.com.

Thanks for all your help re this but I’m happy to let this go. I think it’s just too hard (and illogical!)

 

[IWT]

@krs and/or Jake

Forgive my ignorance, but how do you get a summary and totals for the stored messages "On My Mac"? I'm on macOS Mojave

I'd be interested in seeing how much space they take.

Ian

 

[janeserky]

Hi Ian

For Apple mail: on the left where your mailboxes are listed (inbox, drafts, sent etc), right mouse click and select ‘get account info’. This will show you total usage, amount available and usage per mailbox for the mail account.
There is a drop down box at the top so you can select other mail accounts to view their info.
I HTH.

 

[IWT]

It certainly did help!!

You think you know a bit, then along comes something new. It's great to be able to learn new things.

Thank you very much, janeserky

Ian