Mail in Leopard/Snow Leopard

rossmac · #1 September 3rd, 2009, 01:28 AM

Hi people!

I've been having an issue with Mail in Leopard for months now and I was hoping that SnowLeopard would fix it, but alas it just seems to have made it worse.

Basically I have a number of mailboxes in Mail and they all work fine, except one. Of course it would be the main one I use. More often than not when I open Mail for the first time of the day, this mailbox will either show up with no messages in it, or will do this once I have looked at the other mailboxes and go back to it. Prior to SnowL I generally quit and restarted Mail and that was it solved for the rest of the day.

Now, with SnowL, it not only seems to vanish more often, but the restarting mail trick no longer works. I think I have to restart the machine!

I've tried trashing the plist but that didn't help.

The odd thing (other than the above) is that I have three email addresses on this server and two of them work perfectly, but this one just keeps having this issue.

Does anyone have any ideas as this is driving me a little nuts?

Kind Regards,
Ross

**fryke** · #2 September 3rd, 2009, 06:42 AM

Is a whole e-mail _account_ not working or simply one folder? Both can be called a "mailbox", so it's not entirely clear, I'm afraid.

If it's a whole account, I'd back things up, remove the account completely and re-enter the correct information by hand. Then see if it works properly.

rossmac · #3 September 3rd, 2009, 07:08 AM

It appears to just be the main inbox that is not working- I've checked through the other folder to do with the account (ie: sent, trash, drafts etc) and they all show up content fine.

Interestingly if I do a search on emails that I know are in there- they show up, but when I try to look at the inbox on it's own (ie: no search) it is blank.

It is not even very full- it has about 10Mb in it just now as I cleared it out in the hope that may solve something.

I did even try to remove the whole account- when I deleted the plist file this wiped all my accounts and I had to put all the details in again. I did this for all three of my accounts on the same domain name and once again it's just my main one that is playing up.

I'm really confused!

Ross

Fratellowatches · #4 September 16th, 2009, 06:11 AM

Hi Ross,

Any solution yet? I am encountering the same problems with SL. In Leopard I had no problems at all btw.

Best,
Robert

Satcomer · #5 September 16th, 2009, 09:24 AM

The best way to reset Mail (without loosing Saved email) is to write down you email account settings because we are going to blow that away. This way once you write the settings down you can easily re-add them once the reset comes.

1. Quit Mail.

2. Navigate to the folder /YourHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ and find and trow the file: com.apple.mail.plist : and trow it into Trash Can.

3. Relaunch Mail and once it starts back up put back in the settings for you email servers.

Bonus is the something you probably never used. Once Mail is running go to Mail's menu item "Window" and in the draw-down will be "Connection Doctor" and it will a great tool for trouble shooting email server connections.

Good Luck.

P.S.: Is this an IMAP or POP account you are having trouble with?

Fratellowatches · #6 September 16th, 2009, 09:56 AM

Thanks Satcomer,

I have a POP-account. Are you 100% sure this action won't delete my inbox messages?

Best,
Robert

rossmac · #7 September 16th, 2009, 04:48 PM

Hi Fratellowatches

What I ended up doing was actually completely deleting my email account and recreating it. I don't mean in Mail though- I mean actually going in to the admin section (cPanel in this case) of my email server and deleting the email account I was having issues with. Of course prior to this I moved all my email to my 'On My Mac' folder.

It did mean that for about 10 seconds my email address no longer existed, but then I created a new email address with the same name as the old one. So it appears that the problem I was having at least, was actually being caused by the email account and not necessarily Mail or SL.

Not sure if this will work for you, but it's worth a go!

Regards,
Ross

Fratellowatches · #8 September 16th, 2009, 04:55 PM

Hi Ross (and others),

I took Satcomers advice and tried it. However, I did make a copy (archive) of the mail inside the Mail.app. And gladly I did so!! After removing the com.apple.mail.plist file and restarting Mail, I had to re-enter the mail account. So far, so good. However, all my mail was gone. Luckily I saved it on my harddisk and imported it again.

It seems to work fine now!

Thanks all!

Robert