Email message "not enough space"

[Shirley Gross]

I keep getting the message, "cannot save information about mailboxes because there isn't enough space in your home folder. QUit mail and delete files you don't need." It seems pretty clear, but when I delete mail messages, it doesn't precent this from happening. Any ideas about to resolve this? Thank you!

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Hi and welcome to Mac Help

I'm wondering which macOS version you are using and how much free space you have on your Mac.

You could try deleting the Mail Plist which is basically Mail's preference file. When you restart and launch Mail a new preference Plist file is created. If the error message doesn't reappear it's safe to delete the com.apple.mail.plist file you dragged to your desktop earlier.

Follow these steps:

Click on your desktop image to go to Finder on your Mac​

Click on 'Go' followed by 'Go To Folder' from the top menu​

Type in or copy & paste the following: ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences​

Look for com.apple.mail.plist & drag it out to your desktop​

Restart your Mac and then launch the Mail program & report back here if the error persists.​

 

[Grubbynails]

Hi! Thank you for the answer above - just seen thanks to a web search because my (Sonoma) Mail kept stalling with the same symptoms as reported by Shirley above. I followed your guidance and now have a com.apple.mail.plist file with iCloud symbol on my desktop and another, seemingly a new one, in the folder from which I'd removed it. Good news is that (a) Mail now functions and (b) the Mac HD contents and System Data file have shrunk but the bad news is that a file structure of old mail messages has disappeared. I'm wondering what happens next and if I have, in fact, lost several years worth of Mail data. I didn't dip into it often but I've had the comfort factor of being able to search through it...