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Apple Mail: Getting rid of multiple draft messages in IMAP

6 January 2011 / Alec Kinnear / 38 Comments

I’ve written at length about how to move from POP to IMAP on Apple Mail. This is an update on how to improve your experience with IMAP on Apple Mail.

A tendency to multiply outgoing draft messages is the most irritating characteristic of Apple Mail IMAP. Sometimes they expand to 25 versions of the same outgoing message. You don’t want to delete the most recent one but you do have to stomp them out like weeds, sometimes several times per day. Due to this issue, I was considering moving back to POP. There are no settings on the server or in your account settings which seem to cure this trait.

Apple Mail IMAP draft messages
Apple Mail IMAP draft messages

Fortunately there is one clever workaround. Stop using IMAP for your drafts. If you set Apple Mail to save your drafts locally, they don’t proliferate. There is a significant disadvantage. Any drafts which you have locally will not be available on your other computers.

For me, the absence of drafts across my secondary computers is a price worth paying to not have drafts proliferating like rabbits on my main computer* all day every day.


* A Macbook Air 11″ 1.6 GHz 4GB these days: the Macbook Air is holding up well under stress apart from the 4GB of memory which is very tight in a busy Safari sessions with photo editing in the background when one is writing web log posts. Like now for instance.

Alec Kinnear

Alec Kinnear

Alec has been helping businesses succeed online since 2000. Alec is an SEM expert with a background in advertising, as a former Head of Television for Grey Moscow and Senior Television Producer for Bates, Saatchi and Saatchi Russia.

Categories: IT Tags: apple, apple mail, email, imap

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Lisa 27 September 2011 at 1:56 am

    Thank you so much, this has been driving me mad since I moved from POP to IMAP. Rabbit drafts be gone!

    Reply
  2. Justin Benson 10 October 2011 at 6:09 am

    Agree! Life saver. Thanks for the tip.

    Reply
  3. Stein 5 March 2012 at 5:21 am

    thx. very helpful

    Reply
  4. J-rod 19 July 2012 at 8:26 am

    You have saved my sanity. Thank you!

    Reply
  5. mike 3 August 2012 at 3:06 pm

    Great tip thanks!

    Reply
  6. Vivek 8 August 2012 at 10:23 pm

    Awesome tip!! Thanks a ton.

    Reply
  7. Tom Culbertson 20 August 2012 at 12:55 pm

    Thank you for the solution to this problem posted by Alec. It’s one of the very few times I’ve located a viable solution to a problem.

    Thanks again.

    Tom

    Reply
  8. Avatar photoalec 20 August 2012 at 12:58 pm

    Hi Tom,

    Glad I could help.

    One thing I’ve done which has drastically reduced the time I waste tweaking my computer (and actually allows me to run four of them with less hassle than one used to cost me) is to stop upgrading.

    All my Apple computers are on Snow Leopard (and all the company computers are on Leopard). Each new version of Apple software brings a whole new generation of bugs and inconveniences. When you are no longer shooting at a moving target, with stable application versions, life gets much, much better.

    I don’t like the changes or new features of Lion or Mountain Lion. As Apple requires you to use the current OS version on new hardware, they’ve just outsmarted themselves out of about five computers sales/year (two for me, another three for Foliovision).

    Reply
  9. Guy Cortesi 7 October 2012 at 10:36 pm

    Thanks for the great tip! I don’t recall drafts being saved on the server in the past, but perhaps they were. In any case, the problem is now gone. The multiple drafts seemed to increase like crazy in only a few minutes of editing.

    Reply
  10. Peike 21 October 2012 at 9:38 am

    No longer saving IMAP drafts on the server works, but, why has this bug been in there for at least almost two years now? Third-party applications (like Sparrow) don’t suffer from this nasty proliferating bug.

    Reply
  11. Lewd Dog 30 October 2012 at 8:41 pm

    Thanks for the tip – much appreciated

    Reply
  12. Dylan 10 November 2012 at 12:24 am

    Thank you so much — this problem has been driving me up the wall for months!

    Reply
  13. Daniel Spils 11 November 2012 at 3:58 pm

    Thanks for passing along this simple preference setting. It was driving me nutso!

    Reply
  14. Gary 7 December 2012 at 5:58 pm

    So, do I click or unclick this? As my configuration is currently unclicked and I’m getting draft after draft after draft saved in my “smart folders”

    Reply
  15. BC 24 February 2013 at 6:36 am

    I wish Apple/Gmail would just fix this stupid glitch. Otherwise I love their mail client…

    Reply
  16. Suzanne Bonham 13 July 2013 at 2:42 am

    I guess I just uncheck the box in preferences / accounts called “store draft message on the server” (I have lion) will that fix? Thanks, S (my gmail account refuses to load up as a POP and insists upon loading up as an IMAP. Apparently, once set up as IMAP, always an IMAP)

    Reply
  17. Avatar photoAlec 13 July 2013 at 6:42 pm

    Hi Suzanne,

    Yes, unclicking “store draft messages on the server” will fix the duplicating messages but you’ll only have your drafts locally. I wasn’t aware this awful bug made it across to Lion/Mountain Lion. Pretty sloppy programming.

    You can delete (or inactivate) the Gmail account and try to add it back as POP.

    Reply
  18. Kate 21 August 2013 at 5:31 pm

    I don’t suppose there’s an easy fix to get rid of all the messages that have already been saved? At the moment, every time I search for an email, I get all the drafts to sort through… would love to get rid of them retrospectively (if that makes sense?).

    Thanks for the fix going forward though, life saver!

    Reply
  19. Avatar photoAlec 26 August 2013 at 6:49 am

    Hi Kate,

    Glad I could help.

    Just open up your drafts folder and delete all the messages there (making sure you’ve sent anything you plan to send).

    Reply
  20. f175 15 November 2013 at 9:04 pm

    How do I make multiple deletes from draft folder?

    Reply
  21. Avatar photoAlec 17 November 2013 at 4:22 pm

    Hilite them all (select using shift and click) and then command-delete.

    Reply
  22. Kathryn 23 November 2013 at 6:47 pm

    I can remove the check mark in Icloud but it will not remove from gmail, I take it off and save but checked it out and the check mark came back??

    Reply
  23. Avatar photoAlec 24 November 2013 at 2:12 am

    Hi Kathryn,

    <p>With Gmail and with iCloud you are getting into different territory than standard <span class="caps">IMAP</span>. I don&#8217;t use Gmail (absolutely minimal use) and don&#8217;t like how it behaves with Apple Mail, so I won&#8217;t be able to tell you to solve this issue unfortunately.</p>
    
    <p>Moreover, Gmail and Apple Mail behaviour change from OS to OS or even .1 increments.</p>
    
    <ul>
        <li><a href="https://tidbits.com/article/10253" rel="nofollow">Achieving Email Bliss with <span class="caps">IMAP</span>, Gmail, and Apple Mail</a></li>
        <li><a href="http://tidbits.com/article/14219" rel="nofollow">Mail in Mavericks Changes the Gmail Equation</a></li>
        <li><a href="http://tidbits.com/article/14280" rel="nofollow">Apple Updates Mail to Address Mavericks Bugs</a></li>
        <li><a href="http://tidbits.com/article/14287" rel="nofollow">Mail in Mavericks: Is It Safe Yet?</a></li>
    </ul>
    
    <p>Enjoy.</p>
    Reply
  24. Santiago 30 December 2013 at 3:22 pm

    Alec

    I had the same issue Kathy had with Gmail, checks kept appearing back. Solution is:

    1 Quit your mail app. 2 Go to gmail account on your preferred web browser. 3 Then Settings/labels. 4 In labels look for drafts, then click on SHOW IF UNREAD (need to be in black) and then uncheck SHOW IN IMAP on the right side.

    After this, you can open your mac mail app and try to uncheck the store drafts messages in the server option.

    Hope it helps

    Reply
  25. Avatar photoAlec 8 January 2014 at 10:47 pm

    Thanks for those detailed tips Santiago!


    If Santiago’s tips work for you, please let us know.

    Reply
  26. Ulla 13 February 2014 at 9:07 pm

    Thanks solo much – finally I can see something in my outbox! :) I used to write quite long messages, so they would multiply 20-30 times!!! Crazzzzy! I’m happy again!

    Reply
  27. Tommy Håland 19 May 2014 at 12:41 pm

    Just to let anyone else having this issue know that Santiago’s tip worked for me. Im back to the good old days without hundreds of drafts piling up.

    Thanks

    Reply
  28. Jo Lee 29 June 2014 at 2:55 pm

    Thank you, that did the trick finally. I had repeatedly deleted the drafts manually but they all kept coming back. Now they’ve gone I’m happy to say.

    Reply
  29. Cathy 8 December 2014 at 5:45 pm

    Thank you! The multiple drafts were driving me crazy. I figured it was an easy fix but could not find where to go.

    Reply
  30. Alden 17 December 2014 at 4:59 am

    You wrote about drafts multiplying like rabbits, but I have a slightly different problem. When I send 1 email, it shows 4 going out. I just have one account and my system, and whole computer, was wiped totally clean by Apple, just a week ago so it doesn’t see like this could be malware.

    Any ideas?

    Reply
  31. Avatar photoAlec 17 December 2014 at 7:22 pm

    Hi Alden,

    Thanks for writing.

    I don’t know what version of Mac OS X you are using or what version of Mail. The above is tested on Snow Leopard 10.6.8 with Mail 4.6. Based on all the horror stories about later Mail (a key application for me), I’m glad I’m still on Snow Leopard on all my work computers.

    Reply
  32. Alden 17 December 2014 at 7:27 pm

    Hi Alec,

    Yes, I MUCH prefer 10.6.8 but have had to update to use some other software. I still run 10.6.8 on my production computer. Anyway, do you know of any fixes for Mail 7.3 on Mavericks 10.9.5?

    Thanks for writing back, it’s an old thread so I didn’t know if you would be able to.

    Cheers, Alden

    Reply
  33. Avatar photoAlec 17 December 2014 at 7:37 pm

    Hi Alden,

    I know the issue with other software. There’s a few applications of which I’d like to use the latest version and can’t (Acorn comes to mind, FCP would be another, could care less about Adobe and their sharecropping model now). The pain saved by not updating is still greater than the pain imposed by the absence of latest versions.

    I’d go and visit those Tidbits links. There’s lots of comments over there and Tidbits is as obsessed with Mail as I am (they are also former Eudora power users like me, who even reluctantly moved away from Eudora to Apple Mail). Still miss the power and speed of Eudora.

    Of the alternative IMAP clients, I’ve liked Sparrow the best but Sparrow offers a much narrower feature set and is not being updated. Google spoiled that too (just like Google Calendar no longer works with BusyCal 1.6 since 14 November: there’s no good inexpensive paid group alternatives for Google Calendar as free destroyed the market).

    When you figure it out, Alden, please post the solution back here.

    Thanks!

    Reply
  34. Brosnan 12 May 2016 at 9:09 pm

    I don’t get it! How do I make the change from POP to IMAP? Note: box to save drafts on server was unticked and I had still had multiple draft messages!

    Reply
  35. Avatar photoAlec 18 May 2016 at 6:27 pm

    Hi Brosnan,

    You should disable the current POP account and add an IMAP account in Apple Mail with the same credentials. Your mailserver almost certainly supports both POP and IMAP at the same in 2016 (unless the server administrator deliberately turned off one or the other).

    Reply
  36. Paul 23 September 2016 at 7:13 pm

    If you are working pre-dominantly from one computer this is a good fix and well worth it. Remember though you have to go into each account and execute the fix.

    Reply

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