Do you own a Macbook Pro or Macbook Air from a few years ago? Then you might have noticed your hard drive’s free space rapidly decrease, mainly due to the relatively small size of the hard drives of these Macs. Now, if you take a closer look at your Mac’s hard drive, besides the usual suspects (like your music or photo libraries), you’ll notice that the Mail app can take a lot of space by the time you’ve been using your Mac for only a year.
Cool Tip: There are several tools to check the space on your Mac’s hard drive. In this other entry for example, we take a look at Daisy Disk.
Apr 15, 2011 Tip: Change Mail settings to save hard drive space. While working with a client today, I uncovered a handy tip that could save you an extremely large amount of hard-drive space on your Mac. Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities. If you are looking to free up some of the space being used by Mail, you may find the information and steps outlined in the following article helpful: Free up storage space for email accounts in Mail on Mac - Apple Support Regards.
If your Mac is suffering from this issue, read along to learn how to get rid of unnecessary attachments in Mail and reclaim valuable hard drive space.
Let’s get started.
1. Delete Individual and Group Attachments
The majority of the space taken up by Mail is due to the size of attached files on messages, which Mail downloads and archives for offline access by default. However, Mail also allows you to delete attachments from both individual or groups of messages.
Important Note: Be aware though, if you use this option, the attachments you delete will also be deleted from the server of your email service, since Mail both receives and sends data to IMAP servers every time it connects.
To do this, select any message or group of messages on Mail and on the menu bar click on Message. Then, from the available options, select Remove Attachments and you are done.
As mentioned above, due to your attachments being deleted also from your server, this method is not the most recommended. However, if you follow our next tip, you can put it to good use.
2. Group Messages with Attachments
But let’s say you don’t want to get rid of all your attachments, but only of some of them. Well, you can use one of OS X’s neatest features for this: Smart Folders.
Start by clicking on the + sign at the bottom left of the Mail window and selecting New Smart Mailbox.
Leave the box as is except for the single rule: Contains Attachments. Additionally, you can also check both boxes below that to make sure messages from both the Trash and the Sent folders are included.
Next, click on OK and the new smart mailbox will be created and will start adding messages immediately. Once all your messages with attachments are there, you will be free to look at each of them and decide which attachments are worth staying and which don’t.
3. Backing Up and Deleting Attachments Straight from Your Mac’s Hard Drive
This approach definitely entails more work, but it provides better results and (most importantly) your attachments will not be deleted from your mail server.
Start by heading to your Library folder (in this post we show you how). There, look for the Mail folder and open it.
Inside, you’ll find another folder most likely named something like V2. Open that one as well. Then you will see one or more folders depending on the number of email accounts you have in Mail. These folders will be prefixed with either IMAP or POP, followed by your email address and other information. Identify the email account you want to clean up and open its folder. 3d drawing software free for mac.
Inside you will find other folders. Here, look for the ones that contain a folder inside named with various random characters.
Inside this folder, you will find another one named Data, and inside that one, there will be a series of numbered folders with their own, different sub-folders.
Now here’s the trick. Instead of looking into each one of these manually, type the word Attachments on the Finder window search bar. Once you do, select Data instead of This Mac as your filter, sort the results by Kind and the window will display all the folders with attachments contained in that section of your email account.
Now take some time to make a backup of those attachments. Once you do, you can safely delete them and repeat the process for a couple of other folders/accounts you might have.
There are two advantages to this approach: first, it not only lets you create backups of your attachments, but you can do so by separating each email account, which is great for organizational purposes. Second, this method won’t mess up the attachments on your email server. So next time you find a message without attachments on Mail and click on it, Mail will simply re-download its attachments.
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After you delete all those Attachment folders, you will be surprised at how much space (an entire GB in most cases) you can get back on your hard drive. Enjoy your extra free space!
The above article may contain affiliate links which help support Guiding Tech. However, it does not affect our editorial integrity. The content remains unbiased and authentic.Also See#email #file deletion Did You Know
Email existed even before the world wide web.
More in MacTop 5 iCloud Drive Alternatives for iPhone and Mac
Optimized Storage in macOS Sierra and later* can save space by storing your content in iCloud and making it available on demand. When storage space is needed, files, photos, movies, email attachments, and other files that you seldom use are stored in iCloud automatically. Each file stays right where you last saved it, and downloads when you open it. Files that you’ve used recently remain on your Mac, along with optimized versions of your photos.
* If you haven't yet upgraded to macOS Sierra or later, learn about other ways to free up storage space.
Find out how much storage is available on your Mac
Choose Apple menu > About This Mac, then click Storage. Each segment of the bar is an estimate of the storage space used by a category of files. Move your pointer over each segment for more detail.
Mac Mail App Storage Space Storage
Click the Manage button to open the Storage Management window, pictured below. This button is available only in macOS Sierra or later.
![]() Manage storage on your Mac
The Storage Management window offers recommendations for optimizing your storage. If some recommendations are already turned on, you will see fewer recommendations.
Store in iCloud
Click the Store in iCloud button, then choose from these options:
Storing files in iCloud uses the storage space in your iCloud storage plan. If you reach or exceed your iCloud storage limit, you can either buy more iCloud storage or make more iCloud storage available. iCloud storage starts at 50GB for $0.99 (USD) a month, and you can purchase additional storage directly from your Apple device. Learn more about prices in your region.
Optimize Storage
Click the Optimize button, then choose from these options.
Optimizing storage for movies, TV shows, and email attachments doesn't require iCloud storage space.
Empty Trash Automatically
Empty Trash Automatically permanently deletes files that have been in the Trash for more than 30 days.
Reduce Clutter
Reduce Clutter helps you to identify large files and files you might no longer need. Click the Review Files button, then choose any of the file categories in the sidebar, such as Applications, Documents, Music Creation, or Trash.
You can delete the files in some categories directly from this window. Other categories show the total storage space used by the files in each app. You can then open the app and decide whether to delete files from within it.
Learn how to redownload apps, music, movies, TV shows, and books. https://noteshigh-power.weebly.com/free-screensavers-apps-for-mac.html.
Where to find the settings for each feature
The button for each recommendation in the Storage Management window affects one or more settings in other apps. You can also control those settings directly within each app.
Empty Trash Automatically: From the Finder, choose Finder > Preferences, then click Advanced. Empty Trash Automatically selects “Remove items from the Trash after 30 days.”
Other ways that macOS helps automatically save space
With macOS Sierra or later, your Mac automatically takes these additional steps to save storage space:
Mac Mail App Storage Space FreeHow to free up storage space manually
Even without using the Optimized Storage features of Sierra or later, you can take other steps to make more storage space available:
Learn more
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