Getting bit by the Gmail "exceeded IMAP bandwidth limits" bug

I just ran into this as well -- my "Recovered Messages" mailbox was filled with copies of an email that I had previously sent that had some attachments and was taking up gigabytes of space. Unfortunately, in my case, even if I deleted the "Recovered Messages" mailbox, when I re-launched Mail.app it would re-create it and start re-populating it with the same message over and over again.

I was able to find a fix for this particular problem, so I'll share it here in case it helps anyone out. This is a full description of the situation that I encountered:

(1) I sent an email with some attachments in Mail.app.
(2) A day or two later, my IMAP accounts for that Gmail address (the ones in Mail.app and on my iPhone) stopped working and reported the error: "Account exceeded bandwidth limits. (Failure)"
(3) In my Mail.app, there was a new mailbox called "Recovered Files" that contained hundreds of copies of the email that I had sent in step (1). This mailbox was taking up gigabytes of space on my computer. Even if I deleted the mail box, it would reappear and start re-populating with the same message once Mail.app was able to establish a connection to the Gmail IMAP servers.

Here is the solution to the problem:

(1) If you encounter the "Account exceeded bandwidth limits. (Failure)" error, then quit Mail.app and leave it closed (or just disable your Gmail IMAP account if you use Mail.app for other accounts as well) for 24 hours so that Google will reset your IMAP bandwidth limit. At this point, if you have Gmail set up with your iPhone or other IMAP clients, it should work there.
(2) Delete the hidden folder ".OfflineCache" at the following path: "~/Library/Mail/IMAP-@domain.tld@imap.domain.tld/.OfflineCache"* (step-by-step instructions included at end of post in case you don't know how to do this)
(3) Delete the "Recovered Files" Mailbox folder at "~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Recovered Messages ([Gmail Account Name]).mbox"
(4) Open Mail.app and try to connect to your Gmail account -- it should now work.

This definitely worked for me -- it seems like Mail.app somehow gets in a wacky state where it thinks it needs to download the same message hundreds of times, which causes the account to exceed its bandwidth limits. Deleting the cache seems to resolve these problems without causing any other adverse effects. Huge thanks to "engibeer" at http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=4395706bba19fb05 for coming up with the hard part of the solution!

As a side note, I was running MacOS 10.6.2 when I first ran into this problem, so this issue seems to be different from the one that was supposedly fixed in 10.6.2.

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* Step-by-step instructions for deleting the hidden folder:
(1) Open Terminal.app (located at Applications->Utilities->Terminal.app)
(2) Type in "cd ~/Library/Mail/IMAP-" (without quotes) and then press the tab key. It should auto-complete to something of the form "cd ~/Library/Mail/IMAP-@domain.tld@imap.domain.tld". If it auto-completes to something much shorter, you probably have multiple IMAP accounts in your Mail.app -- press tab again to see a list of all the matches, type enough characters to disambiguate your Gmail account from the other ones, and then press tab to auto-complete. Once you have the full command, press return.
(3) Type in "rm -r .OfflineCache" and press return.

Wow, I think it's really weird that everyone in the world but me experienced this problem last year. This just happened to me yesterday and I've been on 10.6.2 since it's release.

I do believe the recovered folders issue is definitely the problem, it would also explain the loss of battery life and some system lag I've been experiencing.

Thanks for posting this, tons of help.

well thunderbird is not much better i have the same problem with mine tho i has like 5k emails with lots of attachments so that maybe why but up untill just in the last week even with all the attachments it has not been a problem im using thunderbird 3.0 at the moment

There's always this:

https://www.google.com/accounts/UnlockCaptcha?

It lets you reset the account lock. It's haphazard and spotty, but over the weeks I dealt with this problem I did see it work a number of times. Other times it took a couple of hours to apply. Repeating may have helped as well.

Oddly enough, I haven't seen this issue in weeks.

Try using Mailplane

Another workaround -- Use Thunderbird instead of Apple Mail.

Desterado:

Very interesting; I was unaware of that behavior - I actually watched via tcpdump and the server actually initiates contact quite frequently.

Thanks for the tip.

Thanks N I T E!
I was unaware of that Labs feature

Running 10.6.2. Had this exact problem, to the word. Will try this tip, thanks.

I have had similar problems using GMAIL's webmail (Firefox) under Windows XP.

If someone mails a couple of EMAILS with attachments totalling a whopping 50 MB, GMAIL will start bouncing EMAILS stating that my mailbox is full. But when I check the amount of space I am using in GMAIL, I am only using 2% of all my space.

It looks like the latest updates to GMAIL made by Google are buggy!