Change Mail Folder Location

Question

Level 1

26 points

Change Mail Folder Location

I accidentally screwed up the location of my mail folder, the horribly embarrassing details of which are below, if you care. It's pointing to a backup disk and I need it to point to the folder in my account on MacintoshHD.

Is there a plist I can manually edit? Right now I'm stuck with it pointing to the wrong place.

Thanks for any help.

----

This is a cautionary tale about doing stuff when you're tired, not a pro to begin with, and not paying attention:

I was moving a secondary account to an external disk and accidentally pointed the primary account to it in Users & Groups. I repointed the primary account and discovered my Finder settings were hosed, so I tried to load a Carbon Copy Cloner backup plist, and somehow wound up with mail and other more fixable things pointed to the backup disk. And now I can't point back.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.13

Posted on Feb 4, 2024 3:22 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Sean Hayes1 Author

Level 1

26 points

Feb 6, 2024 2:25 PM in response to BDAqua

The instances were all Recent Folder list items. But I did pull the plist, disconnect the backup, and restart; it seems back to normal, minus some custom settings.

The moral of the story for me is a Time Machine backup in addition to CCC. That, and not doing stupid things fast while tired.

Reply

Answer 2

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Feb 4, 2024 10:41 PM in response to Sean Hayes1

Mail>Preferences>Accounts>Your Account>Mailbox Behaviors, what path is Inbox Mailbox set to?

Mail>Preferences>Accounts>Your Account>Mailbox Behaviors, what path is Drafts Mailbox set to?

And so forth?

Reply

Answer 3

Sean Hayes1 Author

Level 1

26 points

Feb 5, 2024 10:50 AM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for the reply. It looks pretty similar to yours. Here's one account:

The mail folder being pointed to is located on the backup disk, though - not the internal SSD. I'm unclear on how I managed this - clearly I did something fast and stupid, but I still don't understand how I managed it. What I need is for the application to point to the mail folder on the internal SSD.

Reply

Answer 4

Sean Hayes1 Author

Level 1

26 points

Feb 5, 2024 11:21 AM in response to Sean Hayes1

Using a plist editor on a copy of my finder plist, I find several instances where the file is pointing to the backup disk, not the internal ssd. Since I've already proven that I can do things fast and stupid, I'm a little reluctant to edit these, but it seems like this might be the solution. (?)

Reply