Can't delete my mail.

July 13, 2008 12:04 PM

Mail won't let me delete one particular email!

I've got a brand new 24" iMac, running OSX 10.5 (Leopard) and everything is fine - except this one email that I can't get rid of! I've tried everything I can think of but it still hangs out when deleted. Specifically, when I delete it, rather than going to the trash it just dims as though its been marked as "read". It then appears as unread in my inbox the next time I launch Mail. Its a message from a yahoo group if that matters. All the other messages from that group have been received, read and deleted just fine.

Any ideas???

posted by blaneyphoto to computers & internet (7 comments total)

What email account do you have (Yahoo, Gmail, your ISPs, etc)? If you go to the webmail version for your account and it is there, you can delete it there and it won't come back.
posted by birdherder at 12:09 PM on July 13, 2008

I tried that, but no luck unfortunately...
posted by blaneyphoto at 12:25 PM on July 13, 2008

I had the same problem with the mail client on my iPhone. The onlyway it was possible for me to get rid of the rogue message was to delete the POP/IMAP account (under Mail-->Preference-->Accounts) and reconfigure the settings for my specific email account.

I don't know if you keep a local backup of your email messages, but even if you do, none of the messages on your hard drive will be deleted.

Good luck!
posted by mahoganyslide at 12:34 PM on July 13, 2008

I suspect you are using an IMAP-configured email account, and that you have "show deleted messages" turned on in Mail.app (View menu, "Show Deleted Messages").

If that's true, then before turning that off, though, go to the Mailbox menu and choose "Erase Deleted Messages" -- and the message will go away. That's a good verification that this was the issue.

Again, if that's true, the best way to get Mail.app to adhere to the sort of behavior you're expecting is to turn OFF the "Show Deleted Messages" option, and then either manually do the "Erase Deleted Messages" periodically (you can just hit command-K) or set your account to do it automatically (in your email account settings, under the Advanced tab, put a checkmark next to the "Compact mailboxes automatically" option).
posted by delfuego at 12:51 PM on July 13, 2008

I tried that, but no luck unfortunately...

What, exactly, did you try? Try quitting Mail, going to your webmail, deleting the message, logging out, and logging back in, and seeing if it's still there. If it's not, and launching Mail causes it to reappear in the webmail client, there's probably something broken about Mail.
posted by oaf at 12:51 PM on July 13, 2008

Thanks for the suggestions everyone. I tried the things both Oaf and Delfuego suggested, but it turns out Mahoganyslide's suggestion was the one that worked!
posted by blaneyphoto at 1:59 PM on July 13, 2008

Bah. I've got some zombie messages (all from Japan; maybe something about the language encoding is making them stick) but doing this didn't help. They disappear when I delete them, but as soon as I open the mailbox again they're back.

I've asked about it on the Apple support boards but never gotten a good answer.
posted by bink at 7:21 AM on July 14, 2008