Mail 5 (OSX Lion) does not work after mailbox migration

Same problem here. The mail program is working but when I do a Command-0 I get a window that says "No Mailbox Selected"

Same problem here, also when I try to open prefrences from the mail menu, nothing happens.

I had exactly the same problem. I could not even open Mail > Preferences...

Out of desparation I had to reset my mail entirely:

Delete ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

Move ~/Library/Mail folder to another place.

Mail then restarts and you can reenter all your settings to get it working.

However, when I tried to import my old Mail messages, it seemed to hang early in the process.

This is clearly not the ideal way to solve the issue but I needed mail access.

Same here - weired thing. According to console mail crashed all the time. I just wondered why, as all my mails are on the IMAP...

Heck - it worked. Had the idea that updates were smoother.... :-(

I think I found the solution. Launch mail from the Applications folder, itll automaticlally update to the new Mail app.

Worked for me!

Same exact problems here as well, looks like we aren't alone. This is the first Mac OS upgrade I've ever had where the Mail upgrade didn't go over absolutely seamless, complete failure. Maybe this is a good time to give Outlook 2011 a shot.

This same thing happened today when migrating a friend's laptop.

THE SOLUTION:

Inside the Library folder (Lion hides this folder now, so hold down the option key and use the Go menu in the finder — Library will appear in the menu. Go there.) you'll find the Mail folder. Inside the mail folder was another folder called V2. I simply took the contents of V2 and dragged them to the parent folder (Mail).

When I launched mail again, everything was back to normal. As Apple says, "It's that simple!"

Holy Moley! That worked for me, like a charm, but how would you ever figure that out?

Worked for me too! 🙂 But I agree with David--how would one figure that out? Also, in my path Library>Mail, I found another folder titled Mail Lost & Found. Since Mail is working now, should I delete that folder? Whaddaya think?

When I had this problem originally, I called Apple support. Their solution was to remove all the 'interesting' files from the Library/Mail folder (including the V2 folder and its files) and import all the mailboxes manually. This would have worked but taken an eternity (>50 mailboxes, >100,000 messages), plus recreating rules, etc.

So I started experimenting. The critical files that made Mail not start up correctly were the SmartMailboxes plists (SmartMailboxes.plist, VersionedSmartMailboxes.plist). I deleted them (and their backups) and Mail started up OK. I put them back, Mail failed to start up. (Tried all that after Mail had transitioned all the old mail to V2 but hadn't successfully started up.)

So I cleared my Mail folder, reinstalled it from backup, removed SmartMailbox plists, and started up Mail. Imported everything just fine (except the old MailTags plugin of course), started up normally. Very Happy now.

Mine has a bunch of random cruft accumulated over the years. Look inside the folders in their and see for yourself -- probably OK but you might find some long-lost treasure.

macmrjohn wrote:

This same thing happened today when migrating a friend's laptop.

THE SOLUTION:

Inside the Library folder (Lion hides this folder now, so hold down the option key and use the Go menu in the finder — Library will appear in the menu. Go there.) you'll find the Mail folder. Inside the mail folder was another folder called V2. I simply took the contents of V2 and dragged them to the parent folder (Mail).

When I launched mail again, everything was back to normal. As Apple says, "It's that simple!"

This same solution works for Mountain Lion as well. Thanks so much!

Sorry, but to sound stupid...what do you mean by "dragging them to the parent folder (Mail)? How do you do that?