Uninstall and Reinstall imail

it's Mail not imail and there is almost certainly no need to uninstall it. the app itself contains no user data and hardly ever goes bad. whatever problems you have are almost certain to come from your user mail data. if you want to start afresh quit Mail and delete the folder home directory/library/mail AND the file homedirectory/library/preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. then start Mail. provided you don't use mobileme you'll get Mail setup assistant asking to set up mail from scratch.

Sorry for hijacking the thread but (V.K) *would this also work if one had stupidly done a complete erase & install instead of archive & install*?
I backed up, but messed up my mail app. I can't send or receive mail, take account online and following the advice from someone on a different mac forum I reset the SMTP address to include my email address eg. smtp.gmail.com:blahdeblah@googlemal.com
Running OSX 10.5.8 Mail version 3.6

Thank you thank you- this was great advice and for the first time in 3 weeks the mail app on my computer is behaving properly. Yippee!

Will this cause me to lose all my mail messages? How do I back those up so I don't lose them? Thank You.