Problem with Mail 1.3.11 (v622)

[josephsbase]

Hello Macosx.com! I'm brand new to this community and I honestly come to these forums for help.

A coworker is having an issue with Mail 1.3.11 (v622) running on his Mac.

Whenever he attempts to view any items that are stored in the sent mail folder he cannot see the email. Instead he sees text at the top of the email that says:

"The message from X user<xuser@domain.com> concerning “Re: email message name” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."

He says that he used to have no problems viewing any sent items but he began to encounter this bug quite a while back but usually closing the software and reopening it would allow him to work around the problem.

Perhaps the local file that holds the stored emails has became too large for the system to work with? Has anyone seen this before? Maybe I should get him to start using some other software? Maybe there are some tools that I can use to repair the mail file?

Thanks for any and all help.

 

[Cam]

The text below from apple support web site. It seems like your friend has set up his system to store sent mail on the server rather than locally? And then took his sent folder offline (under Mailbox in menu bar, there is a toggle for online/offline).
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To have messages in the Sent mailbox stored on your mail server (if you are using an IMAP mail account), choose Mail > Preferences and click Accounts. Select an account. Click Special Mailboxes, and select "Store sent messages on the server." If this option is not selected, sent messages are stored on your computer.

 

[josephsbase]

Thanks for responding to my post Cam.

It seems that this is not the problem. My friend is using a POP configuration.

His options show that incoming mail is to be deleted after 7 days of being on the server; and I cannot locate a setting for me to specify for sent items to be stored.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25812 This apple support html page seemed to be the solution upon first reading it, but my coworker got no luck out of trying these solutions. His problem is still there, he cannot read the text or attachments from his sent mail.

I'm going to keep digging and perhaps email apple. If anyone has another tip or two for me I would be sure to give it a try and would greatly appreciate it.

 

[Cam]

I can't seem to find any more at apple. Assuming this is not a bug, it does appear some setting for this account is leaving the sent mail on the server, and not seeing any copies on your computer. Or since it sees no email on your computer assumes you left it one the server, but they have been deleted? As you noted if the database were really big all kinds of strange things happens. On my system the sent folder has a triangle next to it, and if I untwist this I see paper airplane icons, one for each of my mail accounts. One says Cam's mail and the other syas On my Mac. Does your buddy have such icons, maybe one for the server and one as a local copy?

One option is to delete this account and set it up again on the computer? I think you loose stuff (probably your sent and inbox mail folder) although stuff on the server is suppose to be still there. So copy inbox stuff into a folder first to save needed files. Maybe you could make a new account with a slightly different Full Name to fool the system, and see if that works before deleting the old one.

Or rigorously go through all the settings. Comcast had my sister all goofed up and had two settings concerning SSL (secure socket layers) mis - set. Just in case you could check in the Accounts pain, on the main Account information tab, under the server settings for the SMTP, click on that button. It will have a check box that needs to be checked for Use SSL. Also under the Advanced tab there is another check box for SSL (check this) and my system says a port of 995.