Help! My Apple Mail Inbox shows 4 Billion messages in a few of my email accounts. Now, I know I’m a popular person but this is a bit ridiculous. And truly, there are only about 10 messages in the inbox. Two of my accounts show up normally, and two have this bizarro high number showing up in the header. Every time I click away from the inbox and back in, the number changes slightly. I’ve searched around and cannot find a solution to this one. My main concern is that these phantom messages are eating up precious hard drive space – but it doesn’t seem like they are.
If anyone has had this issue and successfully solved it – please do share your solution in the comments. I would greatly appreciate it!
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I have the exact same problem, and the number of messages is similar: 4,294,959,373.
My Mail app is doing the same thing. Rebuilding the mac mail box temporarily solves the problem, but the 4 billion + count will eventually return.
I think I might have figured it out – if you go into the Mailbox drop down menu and select “erase deleted messages” either in all accounts or in the particular account that has the gazillion messages – the count becomes accurate.
Somehow I think it has something to do with how mailbox behaviors are set up in account preferences which causes a ton of deleted messages to not actually be deleted.
There is not much guidance out there as to how mailbox behaviors should actually be configured for different email services. I finally through in the towel and primarily use the gmail web interface instead of apple mail. I do have one account set up with apple mail so that I can easily send mail to the people in my address book. But I am frustrated to no end. Apple should be easier than this!
I have the exact same problem with two of my IMAP accounts, but not with the other two. And similar to Novice and Null, the count is always a variable on 4,294,9xx,xxx messages.
Jeremy Lee ~
Such an odd issue isn’t it? As long as the phantom messages are not eating up hard drive space – I guess it is ok.
I have several Gmail accounts and several other e-mail accounts that I check using Mac Mail. I had the 4 billion messages problem when there was no Trash bin for my one primary Gmail account with the 4 billion count. I deleted that account, went into Gmail settings and made sure IMAP was disabled (it keeps going back to enabled mysteriously) and then re-added the primary Gmail account to Mac Mail. I think the problem is fixed.
Maja ~
Thanks for sharing your solution. I am sure it will help someone else!
@Novice,
I tried your solution (ticking the ‘Move deleted messages to the Trash mailbox’ box under Mail: Preferences: Accounts: Mailbox Behaviors) and it worked! Thank you so much for the help!
This is happening to me on my iPhone 3GS with Gmail. Any help there?