How can I rebuild all mailboxes at once?

Question

Level 1

104 points

How can I rebuild all mailboxes at once?

In preparation for Lion (I am so ****** that it won't run Eudora I can't tell you) I just used Eudora Mailbox Cleaner to import 20 years of Eudora mailboxes into Apple Mail 4.5. I had previously imported them directly into Mail, but trashed the whole thing because it was so frustrating to have to manually rebuild each mail box one at a time (I have hundreds and it takes 4-EVER to rebuild each single one). Thus I got Eudora Mailbox Cleaner because I read that it would NOT be necessary to rebuild each mailbox after import. Much to my shock, when Eudora Mailbox Cleaner fininished, up popped a window saying in RED "please manually rebuild each mailbox after opening Mail"!!!

Go directly to mailbox jail and do not pass go!

Ok, so, please, can someone please give me a work around to rebuild all the mailboxes at once?

Thank you!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Oct 19, 2011 8:56 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Don Archibald

Level 10

101,623 points

Oct 19, 2011 12:29 PM in response to PeterR

Click on the first one in the list that you want to rebuild, then while holding down Shift click on the last one you want to rebuild. The first and last one and all the ones in between will be selected. Then choose Rebuild from the Mailbox menu. May take a while.

Reply

Answer 2

Oct 19, 2011 12:33 PM in response to PeterR

In the Finder, at the root level of the Mail folder, remove the Envelope Index file (may be more than one due to indexing failures, btw). then Relaunch Mail and allow it reindex all these messages and mailboxes. Does the job of Rebuild across the board. See:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mail/4.0/en/14019.html

Pay no attention to its being for Lion, as this has not changed since Leopard (10.5.8). Especially note that IMAP and Exchange account folder, if any, must be removed before doing this.

Ernie

Reply