rebuild mailboxes

Hey there!

Is Gmail the only account you have in Mail? Just curious if the same happens in the Mail app, with other account’s mailboxes.

Another good test, (Besides safe mode), is to sign into a new admin account, as Gmail and test.

I’d say if it works fine in the new user, but issue persists in safe boot:

I’d either reset user permissions, or:

I’ve had luck in Catalina and Mojave, which are a little different than previous OS’, with these steps:

Make sure you have a backup.

Even if IMAP accounts I may still export each mailbox as an extra backup, (Can never be too careful).

Quit the Mail app.

Open Finder.

While holding “Option”, click on “Go”.

Then select “Library”, (You can let go of “Option” now).

Open “Containers” and select “com.apple.mail”

Select “File” then “New Folder (With Selection)”, this will just make another backup.

Next in the same ~/Library, open Mail > V7 > Mail Data.

Select all the files beginning with “Envelope Index”, and again, move to the trash, or another location as another backup.

Then open the Mail app while holding the Shift key, you’ll be promoted to import your mail as if it was the first time, depending on the amount, may take a while.

Afterwards, you can test, (Note that you may need to hover the cursor to the right of “On My Mac” mailboxes to select “Show” to show them again.

On a side note though, if the same behavior happens in both a new user and safe boot, (Whether or not how it reacts on other devices). Google, in particular has many settings, (Labels, tags, etc), that affect how it shows up in the OS. I have seen one small Gmail setting change from the web completely change mail behavior on Mac OS despite other accounts working just fine.

I also know that now Google now requires you to allow Mac OS to view your mail, sometimes you need to delete and re-add the account to even be prompted for that. (That might be a good step in of itself). And whether or not you have any local rules set up in Mail Preferences, might make a difference, but to me it sounds most likely like an indexing issue, in which the steps above would typically fix.

Hope it works out!

To reset the permissions:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-permissions-for-files-folders-or-disks-mchlp1203/mac

Hey again! Been a while! Glad that worked out, for the time being anyway.

As for that, I’ve seen that quite a bit, the system remembers old servers that you’ve even deleted in the past, so when sending a message you get the error, hit the option to choose a different server, and see all the past servers.

YET When you open Mail Preferences > Accounts > Account Info > Server Settings > Edit SMTP Server List, those ghost/old servers aren’t there!

I’d first quit the Mail app, and re open while holding the Shift key, bypassing the last “Saved State” as it’s called, do they still appear then? If not, then that would be another solution.

Otherwise, resetting the user permissions as I said before may be the fix. If it’s not updating the servers as it should. However that’s a tricky one.

You may need to remove ALL of your Internet Accounts, (After backing up of course), Restart your Mac, then Re-Add one by one checking to see if they re-appear, if not, good.

If so, it could be related to the Keychain, see this post:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8124247

Some there recommend deleting the Keychain entries for “smtp” in Keychain Access, just be sure, as always, before doing so, you backup, and/or know your account passwords as they will need to be re entered on your Mac at some point.

I do think it’s a valid step as well, has worked for me actually for the same issue, but not all issues/steps are a one-in-all fix, but worth a shot definitely.

All this can even be related to your previous issue with the indexing, I’d suspect that it would work just fine in a new admin account, indicating an issue with settings/accounts/permissions/user preferences/configurations. (Although that’s not always the case).

Anyhow hope one of the steps help out!

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup).

Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.

Rebuild once more.

Hey again!

The official procedure for that has changed since Catalina, and as far as I know (And have tried), this is closest to the newer method of resetting user permissions:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/eclecticlight.co/2020/03/28/apple-has-changed-resetting-permissions-again/amp/

This requires also reinstalling the OS as well, however, I know this problem has been around a while, and Big Sur just came out, so I’d probably recommend upgrading the OS.

If you can’t, you can reset them the previous way, (Which with testing myself also still works):

Open Finder > Go > Home.

Hit Command i on the keyboard to Get Info.

Disclose Sharing and. Permissions on the bottom by clicking the triangle to the left.

Hit the gear icon to the left of the lock and select “Apply to enclosed items”.

Wait for that small progress window to disappear, (There is no time line unfortunately so can take anywhere from one minute to hours, but usually quick).

Once that window disappears, open Terminal from Applications/Utilities/Terminal.

Enter this in the Terminal window:

diskutil resetUserPermissions / `id -u`

Then press Return, and wait for the process to finish, Terminal will let you know when done. Then restart and test it out.

I would first suggest though (Also if you’re Mac can’t support Big Sur or you’re unable to upgrade for any reason), just backing up, removing all the Internet Accounts, restarting, then restart adding one at a time though, testing after each addition. As long as you backup, (Even just exporting each mailbox), have IMAP accounts, You should be fine to do this.

Great to hear, take care my friend. :)