Mail lost its mind [eer mailboxes]

[ArchibaldTuttle]

Had to force quit mail. (Running Mail 4.5 on Mac Air OS 10.6.8).

It was locked up. When I tried to reopen it ran the setup assistant as if I had never run mail before and it didn't have my accounts or mailboxes for them.

This happened to me once before and I lost some mail before I finally figured out how to tell the program where my old mailboxes are. They are still there as .mbox files in my user library.

One problem is that I can't figure a way to skip the setup assistant and just open the program. Then I can probably browse around and figure out how to 'import' these mailboxes or rebuild the connections to them.

I flubbed my way through this the last time, but if there is a more scientific approach would appreciate a pointer. Found a bunch of threads describing the same symptoms but none of them seem to have been fully answered, and noone actually asked how to get by the setup assistant.

thanks,

brian

 

[Satcomer]

First try to run the Mail cache cleaning routine describe in the article A possible fix for Slow Mail app. Just make sure you have Mail closed when run this terminal cache cleaning.

Then write down your email server settings because you will need to put those settings back in. Next go to the folder /YourHardDrive/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ and find the file com.apple.mail.plist. and move that file to you Desktop.

Lastly open Mail and ether put those email server settings back in manually or let Mail automatically set them up. Doing these two things will reset your Mail. You saved email will not be changed but you will loose any email still in you INBOX.

Clearing Mail's cache about once a year might be a good thing to do about once a year. Good Luck.