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I just installed Snow Leopard and every time I open Mail, it "Recovers" some message 2 or 3 times, I never had this problems before, it began the next hour after installed SL.
Any idea please,
Thank you
If meaning the problem mentioned in the topic below, please use the Finder to open Home/Library/Mail and locate the file named MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3. Use Get Info to see when this file was last updated -- should be after the last time new messages were downloaded?
Quitting Mail and removing this file, and then relaunching Mail will result in a freshening of the file, if it has become corrupted, but will once more download everything still on the server. But hopefully for the last time. This has solved this problem for others, as has been reported in an earlier topic at:
The discussion goes into other dimensions of the problem for some people checking mail from more than one computer or device, and some providers might be more prone to have this reoccur.
You should also update to the newly released 10.6.1, but I cannot confirm it deals with this issue.
If meaning the problem mentioned in the topic below, please use the Finder to open Home/Library/Mail and locate the file named MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3. Use Get Info to see when this file was last updated -- should be after the last time new messages were downloaded?
Quitting Mail and removing this file, and then relaunching Mail will result in a freshening of the file, if it has become corrupted, but will once more download everything still on the server. But hopefully for the last time. This has solved this problem for others, as has been reported in an earlier topic at:
The discussion goes into other dimensions of the problem for some people checking mail from more than one computer or device, and some providers might be more prone to have this reoccur.
You should also update to the newly released 10.6.1, but I cannot confirm it deals with this issue.
I think these are slightly unrelated issues though. The thread Ernie links to is about POP accounts having their entire contents re-downloaded. My issue (and I believe the OP's issue) is that we are having one or two large emails get re-downloaded over and over again and end up in a "Recovered Messages" folder. Also, I'm using IMAP only to check a single Gmail account and nothing else.
What you cite is probably some sort of index issue. Remember that Gmail has only a subset in the Inbox, and there is also an All Mail folder. If the index were messed, then it would be very easy to resurrect a copy from the All Mail folder.
Maybe you should remove the account, and then set it back, allowing time for all to be reindexed?
I am deathly afraid of removing my Gmail from Mail as I have yet to be able to get anyone's Gmail to function the way I have mine done and I don't want to risk losing that. (I have no [Gmail] header on the left sidebar, everything is linked perfectly so its completely invisible I'm using Gmail IMAP).
I completely think its Mail that is causing the problem though as the email it is repeating is one that shouldn't have existed anywhere but in Mail. Unless it somehow managed to get into the drafts folder. It is not on Gmail anywhere, not in trash, spam, all mail, drafts, inbox, anywhere. And Gmail.com and my iPhone work flawlessly, its only Mail. I think I'll have to find the index file and just manually edit it, as removing and resetting up, even if I knew I could get my settings to match again perfectly, would take forever to re-download and it will just end up with me having to delete a ton of duplicates again (been there, done that).
I don't understand what you report about the invisibility of the folders in the Sidebar, but you can take the risk out testing with another User Account. Create a New User Account, and as that New User launch Mail and try setting up this Gmail account. See the following if not familiar with adding a new user account:
The reason for doing this is to test the Mail app itself, and not to permanently switch to a new user account. Tell me if the behavior continues in that New User Account with Mail?
Btw, I have experienced nothing like this with any account, including my Gmail which is accessed as IMAP.
I am experiencing the same issue: Conect to an IMAP server and try and move a largish (several MB) file form my POP3 inbox to an IMAP folder. The message doesn't appear to go and then a 'Recovered Messages' folder appears under 'On My Mac' and constantly refreshes with the 'stuck' email.
The only way I have found so far of solving this issue is to remove the IMAP account, restart Mail, re-add the account and allow it to download all messages again. Not very convenient with several 100MBs of messages!
I just tested moving a 4.5 MB message from a POP Inbox to a folder created on one of my IMAP accounts on its server. It moved without issue, or anything of the sort you report.
Who is the provider of the IMAP account you are using, and is it a true IMAP, and not Gmail?
Setting up Mail to access my Gmail account in my other user account appears to be working fine. I can see all the current email and there is no "recovered messages" folder.
Setting up Mail to access my Gmail account in my other user account appears to be working fine. I can see all the current email and there is no "recovered messages" folder.
When I open Mail on the affected account, I see data transferring out of my computer, and very little coming down. It seems like Mail is hellbent on sending the 82.1MB email that's somewhere in the system. I have gone into ~/Library/Mail and looked for the email in question, but I can't find it. Quitting mail does exit gracefully though, so its not a hung process or anything.
The big unknown to me is what you are meaning about how you have rearranged the mailboxes and folders in the Sidebar in the original account, and whether this is involved. You may send me a screenshot of the Sidebar, if you wish, by clicking on my name to the left, and looking in the bio line of the resulting Profile for an email address.
I run a private IMAP server I run on my home LAN - primarily for moving email between my Windows Live (Hotmail) mail folders, and Mac Mail. I use a PC to copy email from Hotmail to the IMAP server, and then the Mac to retrieve those messages (I'm also fairly new to Mac - well, the last time I used it in anger it was System 7!).
The private IMAP server is normally reliable, but occasionally a largeish file appears to fail to transfer from Mac to IMAP folder (never from PC to IMAP folder) - it then becomes 'stuck', not appearing in either the POP3 inbox, or the destination folder.
But - and this is the worrying part - Mail whirs away and 'recovers' the stuck email into a 'Recovered Messages' folder. A minute later it whirs some more and creates another copy of the SAME email in the same folder. A minute later and another copy is created.
This carries on - I've left it alone, restarted Mail, restarted the Mac, but each time it creates a new copy of the stuck email. I've seen 20 copies of the same email created. If left unchecked I could imagine it filling
I've tried moving the email out of the folder back into the POP3 inbox, into another IMAP folder, just deleting the messages and emtying the Mail trash - but each time Mail whirs away and carries on creating recovered copies of the same email.
The only way I have found to stop this from happening is to remove the account, restart Mail and then re-add the account for the IMAP server. It then downloads all the messages again and the problem is gone.
Is there just a way to remove the 'stuck' message, or tell Mail to ignore the recovered message so it doesn't create multiple copies?
Ok, so as Richard and Ernie suggested, removing and re-adding the IMAP account did fix the recovered messages issue, but in my case it broke the way I have my Gmail labels mapped to Inbox, Sent, etc.
Then it hit me: Time Machine! In my case, I knew what email was hanging it up "Pics from the Lakehouse" on Sept 10th at 11:37pm (82.1MB in size). So I restored my ~/Library/Mail folder (the whole folder) from Time Machine to the time immediately before that (Sept 10th at 8:13pm in my case). I then also restored the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist files from the same time frame just in case.
When I re-opened Mail, it acted like I had just installed Snow Leopard and "converted" my mailbox. It then instantly refreshed my inbox, and started downloaded the missing emails. The only oddity thus far is it appears to be redownloading my sent items, but I don't see any duplicates in Mail, so I'm not sure what its actually doing. But Mail is working again and I didn't lose my Gmail setup!
Thank you to Ernie for his help on this by the way.
Let get this straight: in this instance you are moving from the Hotmail POP account to a folder of the IMAP account with the Mac (as opposed to normally doing this step on a PC)? If it fails, and you restart then Mail is remembering the task it had set about, and continues to try, but the message now is somewhere other than the POP Inbox, ie Recovered Messages?
I have seen files in Mail in a Recovered File folder put into Trash after a normal restart, but in my case they were files that had successfully been moved, or otherwise been acted upon. I have thought this to be a function of OSX, and not Mail, per se, but where exacting are you seeing this Recovered Message folder while this is happening?
Does the initial moving of the message result from a Rule, dragging manually, or otherwise?
Yes that's right. I have my Hotmail download into Mail via POP3. I have my private IMAP server attached as a seperate mail account. Occasionally when I move a message from the Hotmail POP3 inbox on Mail into an IMAP folder, it doesn't transfer (possibly because of IMAP comms isues) and appears to get stuck.
I spend my working day on a PC, and my leisure time on a Mac, hence the need for a 3rd party shared mail server (the private IMAP server).
When the transfer fails, I would expect Mail to say 'hey, I can't transfer this' and give up, leaving the message in the inbox, except it appears to try and recover the message.
The 'Recovered Messages' folder is in Mail, under the 'On My Mac' set of folders.
It's not the fact that the message fails to transfer over to IMAP - networks are imperfect beasts after all - it's the fact that Mac Mail recovers the same message, over and over again, with no options for fixing or ignoring it that is worrying/slightly annoying.
What I need is a better way of solving this issue if it happens again, rather than the remove/re-add account process. If I could remove the file direct from the file structure, for instance? And how to recognise the file.
