macOS Mojave: Apple Mail Mailbox increases in size drastically after upgrading to Mojave

[sramnani]

macOS Mojave: Apple Mail Mailbox increases in size drastically after upgrading to Mojave

OK... First i was using Mac OSX Yosemite
I upgraded to MacOS Mojave from the app store as apple launched it.

POst the upgrade my mails beca,e a little slow
So i tried to export all mails and do a clean install.

To my surprise when i exported all my mails the total size was 87 GB
The size of my mail box on Yosemite was usually 22-25 GB, yes i have many many old mails from work
The size just doubled, infact tripled

Then i did a clean install of mojave but the mail size was again 80+ GB
how did this happen, can any one help me.

I noticed one thing, if there was an attachment like a small video say 10MB on the mail, that mail showed as 200 or even more as total size.
Why is that

What do i do to reduce this mail box sizes as now i wish to do a clean install of macOS Mojave

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

Sounds like you have tens of thousands of emails stored Apple Mail. Yes, the attachments can take up quite a bit of space.

-Do you have a current time Machine or other backup of your data?
-Do you have more than one email account setup?
-Is your old work email an Exchange account by any chance?
-Do you have a Gmail account?
-How is/are the account(s) setup - as IMAP or POP?

C

 

[sramnani]

Hello and welcome.

Sounds like you have tens of thousands of emails stored Apple Mail. Yes, the attachments can take up quite a bit of space.

-Do you have a current time Machine or other backup of your data?
-Do you have more than one email account setup?
-Is your old work email an Exchange account by any chance? - NO
-Do you have a Gmail account?
-How is/are the account(s) setup - as IMAP or POP?

C

Yes I do have time machine... i do have a previous backup, kept that handy.
My total mail box size there was 52 GB

Yes I have multiple emails configured and all are pop

yes I do have a gmail account but I use it as pop