How to recover Sent Items.mbox after reaching 2 GB limit in 10.3

Question

Level 1

5 points

How to recover Sent Items.mbox after reaching 2 GB limit in 10.3

I have a friend/user who has been using Mail.app since X.2. He's done a good job of separating his Inbox into many different mailboxes. However he never though to separate his Sent mailbox (like most) into separate mailboxes and got stuck with an overstuffed mailbox error. I checked the folder size and it was 2 gigs, and after a little Google work found that his mailbox was "overstuffed". There are a couple of "sure-fire" remedies on the 'net but they don't work. I've tried a bunch of suggestions but can't get the messages in the mbox to reappear. The .mbox file appears intact and not corrupt, as I can see the package contents, however I just cannot find a way to import the messages from the mailbox, apparently because it is past the 2 GB threshold and the mailbox cannot be re-imported.

Does anyone have another suggestion past what I've done? I can certainly go command line if need be. I would love any suggestion at this point.

Thank you for your time.

Apple IIc, Mac OS X (10.4.8), 70 Macs, 100 PC's

Posted on Sep 25, 2007 1:55 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Cerdafied Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 25, 2007 2:04 AM in response to Cerdafied

FYI I've tried this solution from here already:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25812

Reply

Answer 2

imac007

Level 3

845 points

Sep 25, 2007 2:43 AM in response to Cerdafied

First, quit Mail.
Go to the Library folder in your user directory.
Open the folder. Make a copy of both the Mail folder and the Mail Downloads folder. Hold down on the option key and drag each folder to the desktop to make copies.
Now open the Mail folder in the Library window.
Locate the Sent Messages.mbox folder and create a new folder named let's say Sent Messages2.mbox.
Move some of the messages from the Sent Messages.mbox folder to the Sent Messages2.mbox folder.
Remove the Envelope Index file from the Mail folder.
Restart Mail.

Reply

Answer 3

Sep 25, 2007 4:03 AM in response to Cerdafied

Hello,

At this size and with 10.3 almost certain to require using a script to split the mailbox. If using 10.3.9 and Mail 1.3.11 then maybe below 1 GB Rebuild might work, but amazing it got that large before failing to work using 10.3.

There is no Envelope Index in Mail 1.3, btw.

There is a script which I can find a link to (but have to run right now) or that I can email you. If I email, I can also send some screenshots about how the script works. It will only do its job when used on 10.3.x or earlier, so would have to be used on the friend's computer.

My address can be found by clicking on my name to the left, and looking the bio line of my Profile.

Ernie

Reply

Answer 4

Cerdafied Author

Level 1

5 points

Sep 28, 2007 6:27 PM in response to Ernie Stamper

Ernie, thank you I found the script you were talking about, and will try it out on Monday. Thanks for sending me in the right direction!

Reply