Lion, Mail ... Cannot Move Messages

Are you using POP, IMAP, Exchange Server with this issue?

- Mark

MH Tech Solutions, LLC.

Just so I understand, the mailbox you are trying to move the message to is a local one on your Mac, and not a folder within your MobileMe inbox?

- Mark

MH Tech Solutions, LLC.

I am experiencing this same issue since I upgraged to Lion. It doesn't always happen but when it does it always happens to an email that has more that one item in the envelope. For instance the original email + a response and a follow up. Always 2 or more items with in the mail item I am trying to move. It is very frustrating.

I am having the same problem with Mail on Lion.

I currently have a pop mail account, with mail downloaded into my inbox. I have also imported email from a .mbox file into Mail. This shows up under a folder "Imported" under ON MY MAC. When I try to move messages from the imported folders into inbox, I get the error message: "An error occurred while moving messages to mailbox “Inbox — {NAME}." I have tried importing different messages without responses or follow ups, but I get the same error.

Does anybody know what is going on?

I've had the similar problem. When I try to move a mail from my Inbox account to a folder ON MY MAC, I get the same error message as "bannoch" for a few weeks now. Please help!

Get the same error message quite often since moving to Lion - but if close then restart Mail the messages have been moved.

Someone suggested doing a Rebuild of the mailbox and this seems to help for a short while.

Well I am experiencing this issue too, and although I haven't found a solution, I have found one more piece of evidence that a more savvy community member might figure out.

When selecting a single message or a group of messages, whether using the right click function or selecting, clicking and dragging said messages into a folder, the error occurs when one or more of the messages has not fully loaded. even if all of the messages but one have loaded, it will not move any of them. If you see the subject line AND a preview of the message, it will move it. If you only see the subject line and NO preview it wont work. Anyone understand why that might be?

Just a little more info that might help, I have 6 email accounts linked to my mail application, and 4 of them are POP. It believe it only happens with emails recieved only by my POP accounts. I hope this helps!

Thanks all

I would say that makes a bit of sense in the way messages are displayed. The listing is generated from a database that stores all the listing info and links to the raw email file for display of the message. So, if there is no raw file yet (hasn't been downloaded), then I would imagine it wouldn't know what to do.

I think it should handle the issue better, but I think what you describe makes sense.

What it should do is move the message and download it to that storage location in the background, which it doesn't seem to be able to handle.

Thanks Barney. I also think that if you have accessed your email server and deleted the message there, it still shows the message title and sender info, but you can't load or move the message obviously. I think that's what happened to me. My server automatically deleted my messages, so I couldn't load or move them.

So let me understand this... if I'm deleting junk email off of my iphone, and then return to my computer to throw away the same email, this message "null trash cannot do..." pops up bcuz there is no content on the server?

I would more think it is because something didn't sync correctly.

I had the problem of getting "An error occurred while moving messages to mailbox "the name of the mailbox" when trying to copy messages from a Gmail IMAP account to a folder "On My Mac". I found a workaround!

The backstory is the Gmail account was going to deleted as I no longer work for the business that provided it for me, I went and downloaded all emails to Mail so I could still reference them if needed. I thought I had downloaded everything but it looks like not every bit of data was completely downloaded. The Gmail account has now been deleted. It is weird as Mail can still decifer everything and read all the messages that appear.

Go to File > "Import Mailboxes...". Select "Apple Mail" as the source. The in the window that pops up locate User Folder > Library > Mail > V2 (the only folder?) > "IMAP Account" > "Source Mailbox.mbox". Select as many mailboxes as you need to import. I did 6 and they all showed up in their entirity although it took a minute for all 5000 emails to register when I selected all.

Hope that helps anyone!