Deleting messages from Mail app

[James Bond]

I added my gmail account to the Mail app and fired it up this afternoon. Of course it spent 30 minutes downloading old messages that I dont care about and taking up space. If I delete those will they be deleted from the server? I just dont want them locally.

 

[thekoolninja]

I doubt it, the same thing happened to me and i just moved them all to trash. However deleting them from trash, i have not tried

 

[Injury]

The only thing that will make mail delete messages from the server is to check the box that says something like "Remove messages from server after downloading"

mail.app won't re-download messages that you deleted from within mail, but they will remain on the server.

If you don't want them locally, just highlight and click delete and you won't see them again unless you log in to your web-based mail client.

 

[Kmax82]

Well, it actually depends.. are you using IMAP or POP3 to get your mail into Mail?

If POP3, then Injury is correct, but if you're using IMAP, it will indeed delete your email from Gmail. What you'd need to do is create a folder in Gmail where you can move the emails that you want out of your Inbox, and then you can clean up your Inbox and store the emails that you want archived, but don't need direct Inbox access to.

 

[Zerohm]

So basically Mail will not delete emails from my gmail account? (gmail being pop3)

I guess this is more of a gmail question than a Mac Mail question, but what happens when your gmail fills up? I would rather not have to log into gmail via a browser just to mass delete a bunch of emails I've already deleted with my Mail app.

 

[TheStu]

How many emails do you get a minute? My and most everyone else's gmail inbox is something like 7-8GB these days, and I am using 240MB after 5 years. I think you will be safe.