Deleted mail reappears

[robtinbc]

This one has me stumped.

A customer of ours (islandnet.com) running Mac Mail 1.3 and had 8 emails come in on the same day all the same, seems like the same email over and over as the MsgID is the same for each one.

She deletes them and then they reappear later. I called her and had her delete the emails and then go to Mailbox > Rebuild and they reappeared. Just for good measere I had her 'rinse and repeat' and it did it again.

Short of exporting all her mail, deleteing the account from mac mail and creating another email account and re-importing what can we do?

Tell her to live with it?!

Thanks,
Rob Turner
Islandnet.com

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Does your client have any "Rules" set in Mail.app? Anything like "move mail to a certain folder", and/or "copy mail to a certain folder" actions?

Some people report that having rules that involve moving and copying in the same rule cause Mail.app to download duplicate copies of the message.

[robtinbc]

Hello,

Thats not the case, no rules. It sounds like problems I have experienced when trying to fix Eudora or OE where the Table of Contents or .TOC file is not correct, in those cases you delete the TOC or index file and the mail program rebuilds the mailbox contents from scratch.

The key things to note with this problem are:

1. The MSGID for all for mails are the same so its the same email.
2. The email came on only once to her mail account, I am the ISP I can see it only coming in once.
3. Even when Mail is offline and we delete the messages and ebuild the mailbox they reappear.

How do I get a clean rebuild of the index of email in Mac Mail?

Thanks,
Rob Turner
Islandnet.com

[robtinbc]

Hello,

I think I figured it out after getting a few hints from different sites:

- go into the library folder and find the mail folder
- rename the the .plist files to .old and .old.bak respectively
- Also I deleted the POPUID file recording what had already been downloaded as some emails were stuck in her account and not getting downloaded

I'm going to phone her and try it out now after testing it several times here on our office MAC

Thanks,
Rob Turner
Islandnet.com

[Doctor X]

You have to sever the spinal cord and destroy the brain. . . .







What?

--J.D.

[robtinbc]

Okay, so I am on 10.3.9 and she is on 10.4.x and the file structures are different in the mail folder.

Still stumped but going to read a little more regarding .plist and I think I am a step closer.

Rob Turner
Islandnet.com

[Giaguara]

So if those individual mails that keep offending are removed using webmail, they still appear? As in quit Mail, and let her delete those messages from webmail, empty the trash, and launch Mail again.

With most other programs the .plists are harmless to delete, but with Mail doing anything to that file wouldn't be among my first moves.

[robtinbc]

The Mac could be disconnected from internet completely and you delete the mail, restart mail or rebuild the mailbox and the 4 items in the list on Nov 14th reappear.

Its not an issue of the Mail program downloading the mail, its an issue where the mail Table of contents seems to be in error.