When searching for mails in Apple Mail, it can show you a large list of duplicates (or draft versions of your e-mail). Not really user friendly when searching for a specific e-mail. What’s happening here? When you compose messages, drafts are saved local or in an IMAP folder. When searching mails, the default setting is to search in the trash and all IMAP folders.

If your drafs are saved local, they are moved to the trash after sending. If your drafts are saved into an IMAP folder, they won’t be moved to the trash and will pop up when searching in your IMAP folders.

Two settings are necessary to disable the large list:

1) Disable default searching in trash: Go to “Preferences” => “General” and uncheck “Trash” from the search boxes.

2) Disable drafts being saved on the server: Set the local drafts folder for your e-mail accounts instead of an IMAP folder.

Now your search results will be a lot more precisely!