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Gmail IMAP "Copying message" feedback loop

Yesterday I sent an email with 10mbs of attachments from mail.app through gmail imap. after the message sent, I noticed that the spinning icon next to the gmail inbox was perpetually spinning. in the 'activity' window, it says:

Gmail Synchronizing with server
copying message


I figured mail.app and gmail were synchronizing the email. so i let the process go for a few hours yesterday, when I noticed that no new email had come in via gmail, so i checked the account through the web browser. sure enough to find new email, but nothing coming through to mail.app. so i cancelled the process and but the activity status just said "STOPPING: copying message" and didn't go away. So I restarted mail.app. as soon as mail.app was back up and running, the "copying message" status reappeared.

Last night, I let the operation go throughout the night, to wake up this morning with nothing changed. So this morning I checked my "recovered messages (Gmail).mobx" folder to see several 345mb message files. I removed the whole "recovered messages (Gmail).mobx" folder to the desktop and restarted mail.app but I still have the same error.

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Incidentals:

The original message with the 10mbs of attachments was a series of 47 photos. Originally, I had dragged full res photos(6-7mbs/photo) into a mail.app message and chose "medium" from the "image size" pop-up at the bottom pane of the message.

My theory is that in between placing the photos in the message and mail.app resizing them, mail.app and gmail tried to save a draft of the message to the server with all the photos at their original size (they might have been somewhere around that 345mb mark). And somehow mail.app is freaking out continually trying to upload a draft of the message with 345mbs of attachments. just a theory.

how do i get mail.app and gmail imap out this weird feedback loop?

Message was edited by: Ed Fladung

MacBook Pro 2.66, Mac OS X (10.6.3)

Posted on May 6, 2010 8:24 AM

Reply
11 replies

May 6, 2010 9:22 AM in response to Ed Fladung

First, temporarily disable the gmail account in Mail so it does not keep trying to sync or download anything. Then delete the offending message(s) out of your drafts folder, sent folder, outbox, etc. Also go onto gmail.com and delete the copies of it that are on there. Finally, re-enable the account in Apple mail. This should solve the issue.

May 6, 2010 11:00 AM in response to DaddieMac

i had deleted the original message from my gmail account yesterday (via the web browser interface). and then back in mail.app, i disabled my gmail account and deleted the messages. and restarted mail. when i re-enabled gmail the "copying message" appeared again. so i disabled the gmail account again, and deleted the the gmail "recovered message folder" and restarted. and I still get the "copying messages" status

Message was edited by: Ed Fladung

May 11, 2010 5:35 PM in response to Ed Fladung

I was struggling with the same today. What I discovered was "Updating offline cache" in the activity but this message appeared sometimes. Most of the time I only saw "copying message". Deleting those large attachments, draft folder, original message didnt work either.

Try to follow these steps:
- close mail.app
- go to /Users/your profile/Library/Mail/IMAP-accountconcerned/
- delete hidden folder '.OfflineCache'
- start mail.app again

I'm not really sure how offline cache affects the synchronizing gmail account but this worked for me.

Sep 21, 2010 8:49 AM in response to Craig Fer

I had the same problem myself, except that the message contained over 200 pictures. The actual email was only 7MB, but Mail must have decided to create a draft before it resized the pictures. I only noticed the problem after Mail had consumed over 1.5GB of my limited bandwidth and was taking up almost 4GB in RAM, and a lot more in swap. The solution here worked, but it's unfortunate that I needed it at all. Why would I ever want Mail to upload attached photos to an IMAP server at their original size, especially after the final version of the email with resized photos has already been sent? This NEEDS to be fixed, since it could be a huge problem for someone who is less computer savvy.

Gmail IMAP "Copying message" feedback loop

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