Deleting Preference and Other Files

I'm told it's not safe to delete preference files,

Not sure who told you that or why.

There is no danger in removing a preference list except for the necessity of fixing all of the preferences.

The preferences are replaced with the defaults when you start the program again after deleting the prefs.

You can just move the other plist files/folders to your Desktop. Start the program and if nothing is amiss, then you can delete them from your Desktop. If the app has problems, quit and move all the preferences back into the Preferences folder.

It depends on whether version 11 uses files in the folders labeled as for v11 while also using preference files from the earlier versions as well, or if it ignores all the earlier version preference folders and uses only v11 preference files.

You might get a clue by looking at the modification dates inside those folders.

Safest thing is to leave the preferences as they are, if the software is working properly. How much space do they take up? Unless they are using many gigabytes of space, there is no real reason to delete them. Preference files associated with old 32-bit software are ignored under Catalina and do no harm.

You can also experiment (I would do this before upgrading the OS): create a folder on your desktop called "temp" and move all the preference files you want to delete into that folder. Then restart your Mac. Then see if your program (Poser) runs properly. If it does, you can safely put "temp" in the trash and empty it. If it needs those earlier files, just move them back to where they were originally.

I would leave all these files where they are. Unless they are taking up a lot of space, which typically preference files do not.

You could also contact the developer to ask if it is ok to delete earlier version preference files.

Unless you REALLY know exactly what you are doing, I recommend not deleting files from the System folder. That could make your Mac unstable. I think the Mac OS updater (or Migration Assistant if you are using that after a clean install) knows best how to handle things within the System folder.

32-bit apps simply won't run under Catalina. They may sit there but the OS puts a slash over them and you can't run them, they won't start up. Their Preferences files will not have an effect.

One thing that might make sense to do before the update is to uninstall or remove login or startup items that are incompatible with Catalina. You can do that using tools that Mac OS provides, such as the Users and Groups Preference Pane. I would not go doing surgery within the System folder, however, unless you are very certain about what you are doing. During the Mac OS update (or Migration after a clean install), the OS checks to see what the startup or login items are pointing to and won't carry over items that are not compatible with the new OS.

If you are really concerned about leftover stuff affecting your new Catalina system, the safest procedure is to make several good backups (at least two different types), check that the backups are complete and that you can restore some test folders and files from them, and then do an erase and clean install of Catalina. Then on first boot up, tell it to migrate from one of your backups, and migrate over only user files, no applications and no settings or other things. Then, install fresh all your software and set up your printers and other peripherals fresh. I have done this and it takes a bit longer than the simple upgrade, but it sometimes makes sense to take a bit more time.

Stephen Souza1 wrote:

I do find that Mail quits more than it ought to. Does that indicate that Sierra, which I'm on, has "issues"? I would have thought that upgrading to a new OS would solve any issues that the older OS has, as it's being replaced. Is that not the case?

Mail does not typically quit on its own. That's not normal. It's most likely an issue with your Mail files and possible corruption or internal bookkeeping issues within your Mail files and folders. It can result from a system crash that happens while Mail is receiving or sending email. Or from something else unexplained.

It might be worth trying to address the Mail issues before upgrading. But when you upgrade, Catalina will import and convert the mailboxes to a new version of Mail anyway. My suspicion is that when Catalina imports from your old Sierra mailboxes, it will do mostly what you would be doing if you were rebuilding or re-indexing those anyway under Sierra.

When I said "issues," I meant unexplained system level freezes, crashes, restarts. Do you have those, or other oddities like that? Mail comes as part of the Mac OS suite, so I'm not sure what to make about your Mail unexpected quits. The clean install might be most beneficial with regard to third party software problems, versus those that come with the Mac OS, as those will all be new anyway.

You could do these things and see if the Mail issues resolve before upgrading:

• Boot into Safe Mode, which may take 10-30 minutes, it is slow. It will check and repair the file system and empty some caches, either of which could help with the Mail quits.
• Run Disk Utility to check your file system under first aid. This might be redundant with what booting into Safe Mode does, but Disk Utility lets you watch the progress and see what could NOT be repaired. Which might lead you to want to reformat if there are unrepairable problems.
• Check disk SMART status under Disk Utility.

Stephen Souza1 wrote:

That wasn't me: the post about "i just deleted some files in my mail boxes by mistake.. is there a way to retrieve the deleted items"

That was by makcap. Probably a mistake posting.

Yes, I realize that. Someone else jumping into your question/thread, I guess no harm done.

Are you saying I might create a new Account and Password for iCloud?

No. A new account on your Mac. If it is an iCloud email account, you will have to sign into iCloud on the new account to get the email working.

Could the configuration and preference files be deleted and would the recreate themselves anew?

Preferences are almost always Preference List (.plist) files. Preference List files are not necessarily "Preferences" that are recreated from defaults.

Mail is a bit sticky in that way. By configuration files in Mail, I am talking about the "Envelope Index" and other databases it creates (including some plist files). Those things all tie together the raw messages and attachments into the display in Mail. Deleting the Envelope Index will cause Mail to "Rebuild" the mailboxes by digging through all of the raw messages stored on your Mac.

If you delete some of the plist files in the ~/Library/Mail, you may break stuff that would help it index the email.

If you have all IMAP or other server-based email accounts, and you have not stored messages in "On My Mac" mailboxes, you can just "reset" your email accounts by signing out of the email accounts in Internet Accounts system preferences (AppleID for iCloud), then add the accounts anew. Before adding them, I would delete everything in the ~/Library/Mail folder and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist.

Could it make me lose all my data and files?

Maybe I missed it above. Do you not have at least one backup?

Even if I had a backup, I would copy the ~/Library/Mail folder over to another drive as a secondary backup.

Another way to try to clean up Mail is to delete the ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/ folder. That's the Mail "sandbox" and contains all of the config and preferences for the app.

But, I'm not sure how we got to Mail in this whole thing. We started with Poser and its plethora of versioned preferences.

i just deleted some files in my mail boxes by mistake.. is there a way to retrieve the deleted items

You can remove those login items from within the Users and Groups Preference Pane by selecting them and clicking the minus sign (-) underneath.