Mail Folders

I once walked into a friends house, a house I have visited often, and remarked on the painting on her wall.

“That looks lovely”, I said. “Really goes well with the colour of the wall.”

She looked at me, quite reasonably I think, with doubt and concern.

That painting has been there for 5 years!

“Oh?”, I said, “Never seen it before”

I have now booked my MRI scan.

Point being, the painting has always been there and so, mostly, have the folders in Apple mail but a lot of people seem confused all of a sudden.

Now, I will concede there might be a few things that have contributed to this including an upswing in gmail usage, people having more than one email account, and Apple pushing the Favourites concept in the last few version of Mail.

Needless to say, everything is normal but warrants some explaining.

So what’s going on?

Well, every mail account comes with a mandatory set of folders including Inbox, Bin, Sent and Drafts.

If you have more than one account you will have more than one Inbox, Bin, Sent and Drafts folders and they will be under the heading All Drafts, All Sent and so on.

You might also notice, at the top of the list under the heading Favourites, yet more versions of your Inbox, Bin, Sent and Drafts.

So it might seem you have multiple Bins, Drafts and Sents. Don’t worry, they are all the same.

These are there for your convenience and are merely aliases of the real folders. These can be removed by right mouse clicking on the folder and choosing Remove from Favourites.

Assuming you have one mail account (gmail or iCloud or Outlook) The ideal setup would be:

Favourites 

Inbox

Sent

Bin

iCloud 

Inbox

Sent

Drafts

Bin

Personal Folders….

If you have more than one email addresses might look something lime this…

Favourites 

All Inboxes

All Sent

All Bin

iCloud 

Inbox

Sent

Drafts

Bin

Personal Folders….

Google

Inbox

Sent

Drafts

Bin

Personal Folders….

This means anything below the iCloud (gmail, ect) heading can be ignored and all you need to do is concentrate on the folders nested under the Favourites heading.

You can hide any of these folders by clicking on the > symbol to the right and only reveal when you want to get a special folder.

What not to do is start removing folders or any email item accept those found in the Inbox.

Rest assured. Your mail isn’t doubling up and this is all very normal. Like my friends painting… it is messy but it is there for a reason.