MacBook – Deleted email re-appears in inbox after it has been deleted in Mail app

When you create an email Mail.app saves a draft. When you type a few more letters Mail.app deletes the old draft and saves a new one.

If you have "store draft messages on the server" selected (Preferences -> Accounts -> (select account) -> Mailbox behaviours) then every time you make an edit Mail.app sends it to Google then deletes any old drafts. Unfortunately, Google doesn't really delete the old drafts. Instead it moves them to the Bin folder and when you search in Mail.app it finds these hundreds of old drafts.

To stop this occurring on future drafts uncheck "store draft messages on the server" for all my Gmail accounts.

To clear up your old drafts log into to Gmail directly and: * Go to the All Mail folder and manually select and delete all the old drafts * Go to the Bin folder and select "Empty Bin"

Look in the Account settings in Apple Mail and look at the Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) setting and see if it matches the correct mail service. (i.e. is it using the Gmail smtp server if it is a gmail account. Also, you can use the drop down list and select Edit SMTP Server List to select that particular SMTP server's settings. For Gmail it would be smtp.gmail.com and mine is set to use the default ports, has Authentication as password, and has my login credentials.

Hope this helps.