How to prevent Mail.app from downloading all e-mails from an IMAP Folder (such as Public Folders).

Posted on March 28, 2008 
Filed Under Links, Mac

I’m using Mail.app (v. 3.2) and IMAP to connect to an Exchange Server for my e-mails. Unfortunately, I can’t get Mail.app to unsubscribe from thousands of e-mails filling the “Public Folder”. Some users are reporting that it works by right clicking on the account, then “Get Account Info” where you can subscribe/unsubscribe from the “Subscription List”. Not for me, I can’t see a list or something. Hopefully, Apple is going to fix that in a future release (or Microsoft is going to work with standards – hell freezes over). I found a quick & dirty way to prevent Mail.app from downloading an IMAP folder:

  1. Navigate to your home folder. Then from there go to Library/Mail/IMAP-your-account.
  2. Optionally: Go to your disliked folder and delete all the stuff inside.
  3. And here is the trick: Choose the disliked folder, then File -> “Get Info” and make it Locked.

As I said, not a clean fix but simply works!

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