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To free some space from iCloud Drive, I yearly move my Sent mail from the previous year to a dedicated mailbox, export it to a non-cloud location, and then delete it from Mail. Since this is the first time I perform it on Apple Silicon (M3 Max here), I wonder if there is any way of monitoring its progress.
The Mail Activity window shows nothing, but the folder on the Desktop is steadily growing, just at an impossibly slow pace.
How does this process work? How can one monitor it, perhaps abort it and start it again?

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    If you disconnect from all networks, does the pace change? What are you measuring specifically on the folder for impossibly slow growth? It would be interesting to see data from 4 total 15 minute measurements to see what an hours progress was.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Oct 26 at 12:43
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    Well ... disconnecting from networks (turning off Wifi) made the process complete in a couple of seconds! Please add your suggestion as an answer and I will mark it as the correct one. Let's say that in 1.5 hours it had not completed beyond 180 MB (total size 244 MB).
    – NotationMaster
    Commented Oct 26 at 13:21
  • Gladly. Please edit my answer thoroughly or make your own. I’m very pleased my guess was worth trying.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Oct 26 at 14:31

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I have run into similar performance issues where being online causes slow Time Machine backups, slow exports and problems making large changes to Photos database.

One troubleshooting exercise is to disable the network to ensure I can’t make my changes offline without a sync being triggered or a sync down from iCloud or other online service constantly interrupting progress or locking transactions.

Your mail export is clearly working on downloaded content - can you see if it works with network disabled?

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