Want to highlight a helpful answer? Upvote!

Did someone help you, or did an answer or User Tip resolve your issue? Upvote by selecting the upvote arrow. Your feedback helps others! Learn more about when to upvote >

Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

adamast Author

Level 1

0 points

[SOLUTION]Mail does not quit or show old messages after 10.4-10.5 migration

I work for an Apple Specialist in California and have found a solution to this relatively common issue. There is an interesting bug with mail I found that happens occasionally in a 10.4 (Tiger) to 10.5 (Leopard) migration. This bug will cause Mail to be unable to quit and all your messages will not appear in the mail window. I don't know if this problem manifests in any other situation but a 10.4-10.5 migration. I have seen this problem more than once since the release of 10.5.6. To fix this issue:

1. Navigate to your Library folder inside your home folder.

2. Locate the Mail folder and drag it to your desktop.

3. Launch the Mail application.

4. Mail will now ask you if you want import your messages. DO NOT HIT CONTINUE YET.

5. Navigate back to your Library folder inside your home folder. Notice there is a NEW mail folder that was created. You cannot delete this folder yet because it is in use by mail so we will just rename this folder Mail2.

6. Drag your OLD mail folder located on your desktop to your Library folder located in your home folder.

7. Go back to the Mail application and click continue. Your messages and settings should import fine now.

8. Verify that your messages and settings imported correctly and quit Mail. Navigate back to your home Library folder located in your home folder and delete the Mail2 folder.

9. Launch the Mail application again and make sure everything functions correctly.

I found a fix to this by just messing around with the issue for awhile. I have found NO good resolutions online for this bug. Good luck to you all.

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jan 2, 2009 3:29 PM

146 replies

macnoir

Level 1

0 points

Jan 19, 2009 2:45 PM in response to adamast

adamast,

add me to the choir. I ran into this problem today and your solution worked perfectly.

Thanks!

jscjsc

Level 1

9 points

Jan 19, 2009 8:38 PM in response to adamast

I must add my thanks! Apple should post this and pay you for it!

roebu

Level 1

8 points

Jan 20, 2009 9:49 AM in response to adamast

I'm glad I found this solution. Thanks a lot!

Jan 20, 2009 11:38 AM in response to adamast

Thank you very much for your help ! I installed leopard on a macbook & on my G5: the same problem happends. So thank you again for spending time to help poor users like me !
Greetings

Jan 20, 2009 7:16 PM in response to adamast

THANK YOU SOOO MUCH! Your fix worked great and saved me hours of frustration!!
Thank you Thank you!!
Love these forums!

Jan 22, 2009 10:14 AM in response to adamast

Onyx did it for me.

jayama

Level 1

0 points

Jan 23, 2009 7:39 PM in response to adamast

BEAUTIFUL after so many hours! Thank You! Problem finished! Many Thanks, you are an angel.

bbwoy

Level 1

0 points

Jan 24, 2009 8:00 AM in response to adamast

wow....so simple....

thanks so much.

Gotta love google....took me about 20 seconds to find your awesome fix for this.

FYI...there is also an update for mail for anyone using 10.5.6 so any other mail issues people are having may be fixed with this update.

Once again, thanks for posting this.

Saved me untold frustration and upset.

Cheers.

Jan 24, 2009 2:59 PM in response to adamast

Add my Thank You! to the list. Upgraded my Intel iMac from 10.4.x to 10.5.6 and Mail was broken. This did the trick.

Thanks Again!!

Dave_K.

Level 3

660 points

Jan 24, 2009 5:57 PM in response to adamast

Adam-

Wow! Nice job and thank you! I upgraded today from 10.4.11 to 10.5.6 and Mail died exactly as you described!

I used your technique and got Mail running. But as others said, I lost my nearly 50 Mail Rules and all junk mail learning. ;(

My question is this- given the immense response to your thread, I have to ask "how on earth did Apple screw this up THIS bad??" I could see it if we were migrating from one company's mail program to another's- but from one version of Apple Mail to another? As a 25 year Mac user, all I can say is sad, sad, sad.

Anyhow, thanks again Adam! The jury is still out if I'm going back to Tiger or not. I can restore to my Tiger backup faster than I can re-create all my Mail rules, so that's how I'm leaning...

Dave

Dave_K.

Level 3

660 points

Jan 25, 2009 7:28 AM in response to adamast

One thought on this obviously wide-spread issue. Did it happen to anyone previous to 10.5.6? It appears all the posts on this started in December around the time 10.5.6 was released.

And if so, would it help if when one upgraded from 10.4.x, you did NOT update to 10.5.6 until AFTER running Mail the first time? i.e. run the installer DVD which presumably will put 10.5.1 (or something similar) onto your Mac. Then run Mail. Then download and install 10.5.6.

Or has this problem been around much longer than I think? Anyone tried it as I suggested above and STILL had this problem?

Thanks!

Dave

Dave_K.

Level 3

660 points

Jan 25, 2009 11:37 AM in response to Dave_K.

Hey gang-

I've discovered something important about this bug and I wish I could get the word out to save folks the trouble we all went through. After encountering this problem, I reverted back to Tiger from my cloned backup. I then re-installed Leopard, but this time I DID NOT APPLY THE 10.5.6 update. I launched Mail and it works flawlessly- importing all my old mail, rules, folders, etc.

Like most of you, I had been running Tiger 10.4.11 and Mail 2.1.1. My Leopard install disk has version 10.5.1 and Mail 3.1. The Tiger 10.5.6 update installs Mail 3.5.

So, the question is, where does the problem begin- is it with 10.5.6 itself? The Combo updater? Or something in Mail 3.5?

At this point, I have no intention of finding out! I now have Leopard up and running and Mail is working flawlessly. I MAY download and run the 10.5.2 or 10.5.3 installers, but I'm leaving 10.5.5 and 10.5.6 alone for now. I'll keep an eye on the boards and maybe Apple will fix this in the 10.5.7 update.

Thanks again to Adam as well!

Dave

Jan 26, 2009 5:51 AM in response to adamast

Your Brilliant!!! Thanks

juicemt

Level 1

0 points

Jan 26, 2009 9:28 AM in response to adamast

I upgraded to 10.5.6. and ran into this issue like so many others. I used the steps below and they worked great. Thank you for posting this fix.

My one problem I am having is that all my emails that were just located in my Inbox (an not filed into folders), I cannot find. Any emails I had placed in folders all imported just fine. I have two mailboxes (one for me and one for my wife) so anything not filed away in folders did not show up. Any ideas how to retrieve these messages? Any help would be great!

Jan 27, 2009 9:32 PM in response to adamast

From one California Mac techie to another, I just wanted to add one more THANK YOU!! to this thread.

I just migrated 3 users to new Mac Pro towers using the Migration Assistant. When I logged in as the old user, the mail was blank for all 3 of them.

Before manually trying to rebuild their mail folder I googled blank leopard upgrade mail which eventually led me here.

This little trick just saved me several hours of rebuilding accounts and manually re-importing mail folders.

*THANK YOU!!!*

[SOLUTION]Mail does not quit or show old messages after 10.4-10.5 migration