unread mail count wrong

I have the same problem. Really bothersome. When I select all and mark them as unread I have 217 mails and 248 unread. Or when I select all and mark them as read I still have 31 as unread. For me this is on one of the mail accounts only (the exchange one). All others seem to work OK for now. Problem started after updating to Lion.

macbook 13" with Mac OS X (10.7)

Does this problem persist after starting in Safe Mode?

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1455

charlie

I have the same issue. Would love to hear if anyone has found a solution.

I see the same problem on my iMac, but have more interesting insights! I see one unread message in my company Exchange account. If I select all, mark as unread, it still does not disappear. I have also created a smart mailbox that contains only unread messages, but it is empty and does not show the one mysterious unread message.

Now what is interesting. I am accessing this email account also at work via Outlook, and also on my MacBook Pro, and iPhone, and on all these devices, I do not see this problem = no unread messages! So the problem must be connected to the iMac itself.

Any help?

Close the mail program.

In your library ( ~/library/ ) mail>mail data folder there are several "envelope" files, ie. envelope, envelope-shm, envelope-wal... remove these to your desktop... incase you want to put them back.

Restart mail, it will rebuild these files probably correctly.

If satisfied, drag the old versions"envelope" files on your destop to the trash.

Alternative, OnyX is a Mac utility that has a "rebuild envelope files" option, does the same job.

JakubD, that describes my symptoms exactly as well. Chris, thanks for the suggestion! I tried using OnyX to rebuild the envelopes files ... alas, no dice. The phantom message remains.

sj

Have you tried physically removing the files and letting mail rebuild from scratch?

That seems to have done it! Takes a while to rebuild the whole index, but it did the trick. Thanks, Chris!

Chris, many thanks! I did the envelope* files deletation and it worked. First it seemed I have lost all of my 5000 mails after the rebuild, as the mailbox was empty (but smart mailboxes showed the files), but one Mail kill and restart worked! :-) All mails there, no mysterious unread message anymore!!

One more interesting thing regarding the Dock wrong mail count... Both the mailbox and the Dock showed one unread message. The settings "dock unread count" were made to show just the INBOX messages! When I set Dock unread count to "All mailboxes", Dock icon showed NO unread messages. VERY strange - I would expect exactly the opposite!!

Was it Inspector Clouseau who said "expect the unexpected?"

Thanks Chris. This also worked for me! 🙂

Problem: My dock reads the proper number of unread emails between my two accounts (hotmail and iCloud). The problem is that the badge next to the icloud inbox is absent (although any Unread emails still are added up properly when shown in the dock count).

I've tried the (~/library/mail/mail data etc..) twice. I have also painfully waited hours to rebuild my mailboxes twice and i have deleted and then re-added the icloud acount multiple times. I'm also aware of the "Dock Unread Count' function in the Mail Preferances pane.

Any other suggestions?

Chris-

I am running 10.7.2. and, to my surprise, I have not been successful with any of your fixes.

I (oddly) have no pathway (~/library/mail/mail data etc..). In fact, there is no "mail" at all in "library." SO no luck there. I ran the onyx rebuild mail folder option: no luck. I went so far as to rebuild my startup by creating a startup disk on a flashdrive (needed to do this according to Onyx), yet I still have mail indicating the wrong number of unread emails. In fact, it always says "1" whether I have 20 unread emails or none. Any ideas or thoughts?

Thanks,

Chris