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macOS Mail folders are often not sorted in alphabetical order by default, especially when new mailbox folders are added to an existing mailbox. Although the mailbox folders are in A to Z order at the mail web access, e.g. iCloud.com, they are not on your macOS Mail app. If you are unable to order alphabetically all mailbox folders on your Mac, you just need to delete the corresponding mailbox library. Not a single SSH shell command is necessary.
macOS Mail folders alphabetically sorting_01_folder not alphabetically sorted
Here is how to alphabetize Mac mail folders automatically again:
macOS Mail folders alphabetically sorting_02_trash Mail library
- Close the macOS Mail app, if it is currently open.
- Launch Finder app. While pressing the option key on your keyboard, click onto the ‘Go‘ menu and then select ‘Library‘.
- Scroll down till you find the ‘Mail‘ folder and open the folder.
- Within the Mail folder, you will find one or more subfolders named like V1 / V2 / V3 …., in my case it is named ‘V6’.
- Trash all ‘Vx’-folders. Note: Do not finally delete them until you are sure you will not need them anymore.
- Launch macOS Mail app. All email accounts will be synced again. This can take a while. After the sync is complete, all of your mailbox folders are shown again in alphabetical order.
macOS Mail folders alphabetically sorting_03_folder alphabetically sorted
Note:
- Mainly iCloud mail accounts are affected by mailbox folders not sorting in alphabetically order. However, this fix works for Gmail, Outlook and any other email accounts, too.
- If you’re using IMAP or Exchange and have all your messages stored on a remote server, you shouldn’t be able to delete those messages through this process. If you have locally stored mailboxes, make sure they’re archived via Time Machine or other backup software!
- The fix was tested succesfully on macOS 10.14 Mojave.
Fix macOS mailbox folders (iCloud, Gmail, Outlook.com,…) not be sorted alphabetically by deleting the Mail library and automatically resyncing all mailbox accounts.
Stay tuned ! 😉
About Gee Are Pabst
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my name is Gee Are, blogger and analyst. Blogging is my Passion! I’m the founder and owner of the two blogs called pabst.socialmedia and miapple.me - Tech.Blog.
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miapple.me - Tech.Blog
This fix worked! Many thanks.
Mucho Gracias Señor. I worked with Apple senior advisor for over an hour today about this with no fix. But your method worked. Wonder how they all of a sudden got out of order?
Good fix. But you do loose smart mailboxes.
YES!!!!!!! AWESOME!!!! WORKED!!!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!
You’re welcome! 🙂
amazing … really simple fix its works !!! thanks bud
You‘re welcome! 🙂
Lost all my mailboxes. Massive fail.
Did you restart your Mac?
I have a weird problem on only one of my MACs with Mojave.
I moved my host and on the MacbookPro all my tons of subfolders under the inbox are correctly lined up under the inbox folder of this account.
However the MacPro shows a totally different behaviour ANY new mailbox – not smart – or this account when I created it new with the new host puts all submailboxen much down in separated from the Inbox.
Drives me mad but I have no idea how to fix it.
Deleting V6 did not help in my case – all the submailboxes are nicely sorted but separated from the inbox.
Any idea?
hi, my folders in Mail were sorted in reverse alphabet order. deleted v number files as instructed to no avail. how do list them in normal alphabet order pls?