disappearing emails

Hi Judy, as you see, you cannot do that, you can create a new Mailbox of a different name & move the eMails though.

Create a new Mailbox, quit Mail, then in Finder go to...

I'd backup these two Mail folders, by right clicking on them in the Finder, then choose Archive/Compress.

Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail

Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail Downloads

(Could be a different folder here if you chose such in Mail Prefs)

Right click on that Mail folder, choose archive, you'll get everything in the folder, and the folder itself in a file called Mail.zip, move it to a safe place, same for the Mail Downloads folder... only the plist is separate.

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

Then start Mail & try to name that folder back to the original, quit & restart Mail, if that doesn't work we'll have to in the Finder go to...

Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail

Find that particular Mailbox & move the .emlx files

(dot ee em el ex)

To that new folder we created in Mail.

My fault you don't understand, not yours, I'll keep trying. 🙂

Why is renaming a mailbox an option in the menu if I can't do it without making my emails disappear?

I misunderstood, thought you did it some other way, the way you did it should work, might try this.

Not certain, but this can fix myriad Mail problems...

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), it will try to repair your Disk Directory while the spinning radian is happening, so let it go, run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move these folder & file to the Desktop.

Move this Folder to the Desktop...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/

Move this file to the Desktop...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index

Reboot.

BTW, is this IMAP or POP?

EDIT:

Are my missing emails still in the computer somewhere?

I'd get EasyFind...

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/11076

Here's a direct download link to EasyFind 4.0 which runs in 10.3.9 & up...

http://www.devon-technologies.com/files/legacy/macosx1039/EasyFind.dmg.zip

From this page,

http://www.devon-technologies.com/support/faqs.php?p=default&cat=19

Freeware applications:

* EasyFind 4.0
* PhotoStickies 5.6
* ThumbsUp 4.3
* XMenu 1.8

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/8707

Use it to search your whole drive for case insensitive & show invisibles...

.emlx

(dot ee em el ex)

Message was edited by: BDAqua

Well we really should backup/archive/zip the whole Mail folder as mentioned in my 1st post so we don't lose anything not already lost, before proceeding further.

That's OK, it could be empty, no worry.

After you move the zip file to a safe place, have you tried the myriad fix yet?

Not certain, but this can fix myriad Mail problems...

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), it will try to repair your Disk Directory while the spinning radian is happening, so let it go, run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move these folder & file to the Desktop.

Move this Folder to the Desktop...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/

Move this file to the Desktop...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index

Reboot.

Quit Mail. In the Finder select all those .emlx files on that box you can't see & move them to that new Mailbox folder you created hopefully earlier.