Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Mac Mail app issue

Hi all. Just today, I have been experiencing a weird occurrence where I delete emails from my inbox, but they keep reappearing. I delete them with a backspace, or a command+backspace, maybe ten emails, then quit the app. Upon relaunching the app, all the deleted emails are back in my inbox. All software is up-to-date on my 12.7.1 system.

It's not life-threatening, but it's effing annoying.

Ideas? Thanks.

My "one size fits all" cure is to delete a plist file. It seems to work better than 7% of the time.

com.apple.mail-shared.plist

That's the only one I see with "mail" in the name. It can't hurt to try.

That happened to me when Spectrum (my ISP) was having issues. They fixed it a few hours later. Perhaps contacting your ISP would be informative (I have an IMAP account).

Deleting plists has always been a go-to, but I wouldn't mess with Mail.

Sonoma 14.1.1, not that I think it matters.

There are some ancient emails that I leave in my Verizon account on line for various reasons, and they've recently begun getting re-delivered.

Got me beat! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I recently went through a spell of previously deleted emails re-appearing in the inbox. After several occurrences, I contacted the service provider who responded, "we are working on it". I did not probe further as I was in the process of switching to a new service provider, but it appeared they were reloading their IMAP server again and again. Fifteen or twenty years ago, that was not uncommon, but it happens so seldom these days it is easy to forget that it can happen.

Thanks, all!

My email accounts are with Google, except I have a .mac account that gets little use. I'll keep an eye on things and let you know if it sorts itself out.

My issue is neither pervasive nor annoying enough to induce me to deal with AOL customer service, so I'll just grin & bear it for as long as it lasts.

I hope I'm not premature, but I read something on Apple communities about deleted emails reappearing that mentioned "sync". Right. I got my Google phone out, deleted all the problem emails from Google Mail and, so far, they have not reappeared on my iMac Mail app.

Well, in a case of the tail wagging the dog, my Google Pixel 6a seems to control which emails can be deleted, not my iMac's Mail.app. I can live with that.

What surprises me is that I've had this phone since July '22 and this behaviour has only just started in the past few days. Weird. Maybe it was a recent security update to the Pixel? Dunno.

In Mail on your Mac, go to Mail > Settings > Accounts, select GMail in the sidebar then click on the minus sign at the bottom of the sidebar. That will delete the account on your Mac. Then click on the Plus sign at the bottom of the sidebar, choose Google in the popup, and fill in the requested information. Because it is an IMAP account, the account, and all of its mailboxes and their contents, should be restored. (I have done this several times and never lost a thing).

Repeat the process on your Google Pixel. I don't know the exact steps as I have an iPhone but it should be similar.

This should recreate the account connection and configuration on both devices, and unless there is something really funky going on, normal IMAP handling should be restored.

Thanks, joemikeb, I followed your advice and the problem seems to be sorted. Dealing with all of the Apple/Google security alerts was a nuisance and I had to spend awhile resetting my Plex app on computer and TV (tied to Google email, I guess) but everything is working fine now.