How to _completely_ reset Mac Mail to pristine settings

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How to _completely_ reset Mac Mail to pristine settings

I've been battling Mac Mail now for quite a while, first with Big Sur, and now after the Monterrey upgrade, as well as another fresh wipe and reinstall of Monterrey. Strangely, the problems persist. It is pretty severe, as in the client will not send or receive mail, ever. Oddly, I can add an IMAP/SMTP account and it will act like it usually does and seem fine. But I simply cannot get anything through. I am my own email provider and have three other user agents which all work perfectly. I followed the steps in another post about "resetting Mac Mail" but it didn't work for me.

Is there some way to _completely_ revert Mail to it's virgin state, whether that means blowing away any iCloud bits or what not, I really down't know. I just wish it would work!

Regards,

Steve

Mac mini 2018 or later

Posted on Jan 3, 2022 9:54 AM

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Answer 1

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Barney-15E

Level 10

112,360 points

Jan 3, 2022 11:23 AM in response to Sirdotcom

You could delete all of its configuration and storage locations. It should recreate them.

In Internet Accounts, remove all email accounts (in iCloud, you disable Mail). Then, delete these

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail-shared.plist

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail (this will likely just show as Mail, along with several others--I would remove all of them).

~/Library/Mail/

I have deleted some of those (including the containers) and it rebuilt them. I have never deleted all of them.

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Answer 2

Sirdotcom Author

Level 1

7 points

Jan 3, 2022 12:02 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thank you so much for the excellent info. At last, I finally have Mail working and not linked to iCloud. All the files were in the Library, including about six duplicates of ~/Library/Mail. After numerous episodes of deleting and re-adding accounts to no avail, this is a great thing. Thanks very much for your help!

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How to _completely_ reset Mac Mail to pristine settings

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