I keep old messages in Mailboxes. They are listed there with full details of From, To, Subject, Date, no. of attachments and size... but, when I want to look at the messages, they are totally blank.
I have Mail 3.6 on a MacPro with OSX v10.5.8. The "blank" messages (and Mailboxes) will have been created in earlier versions of Mail and an earlier OS.
Please can anyone help?
Sorry. I've just realised that this problem probably arose when I tried to upgrade to Snow Leopard. (I changed my mind when I found that software I needed was not compatible, so I went back to 10.5.)
My guess is that the Mailboxes were upgraded to 10.6 and not changed back again.
My second guess is that I must upgrade to 10.6 to see my old messages again... Right?
You might just need to Rebuild the Mailbox, highlight that Mailbox & choose Mail>Mailbox>Rebuild.
Do you have backups of these, we may need to Import, but let's see.
Thanks BDAqua. That is absolutely fantastic. Thank you so much.
Mike
Great news Mike, thanks! 🙂
Oh dear. Perhaps not all OK after all.
The rebuilt mailbox messages have either lost all messages with attachments, or have kep messages but lost their attachments. (Still checking to see. I think the former.)
I was so pleased, too!
: o (
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 this 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.
If that doesn't do it and you can afford to redo all your Rules, try these & reboot...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist.backup
Note, in 10.5 & up /Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/ may or may not exist.
Hi BDAqua. Thanks again for advice.
I followed your instructions as far as moving Envelope Index to the Desktop. (There was no Caches/Mail.) All seems to be working OK now.
However I think I've probably lost all my old messages with attachments, after rebuilding their Mailboxes earlier. (I've tried restoring relevant Mailboxes from Time Machine. However it looks as if TM had only saved messages that didn't have attachments. I guess this was because it didn't recognise OS 10.6 Mail files, on my 10.5.)
Thanks, though, for trying.
Mike
Mike, see in Mail>Preferences>General if there's a setting for Mail Downloads, perhaps it's a different folder!?
Hi again
Mail's Downloads folder is set at "Downloads" but it's actually the "Mail Downloads" folder in my Username>Library, not Username>Downloads.
There are attachments in that folder that have arrived over the past couple of years ( ! ). However the attachments that came (and were sent) with my really older messages are not there.
Note that, since I rebuilt the old Mailboxes that had messages I couldn't read at all, yesterday, all the messages that had attachments have disappeared completely - not just the attachments.
Mike
Whew, it getting more perplexing, not less!?
Get EasyFind...
http://www.devon-technologies.com/download/
Near the bottom of the page.
Use it to search your whole drive for case insensitive & show invisibles...
.emlx
(dot ee em el ex)
Sort by Location to see if there might be an unusual location. Sort by Date to see if we find any in the missing time frame.
No. Sorry. Nothing showed at all.
Whoa, do you have any eMails showing in Mail at all??? If so it should at least list them!?
In finder open the Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/ folder, you should see some accounts there, keep opening folders to see if there are any .EMLX files.
Sorry. Silly mistake. I was expecting .emlx files to be found just by typing in ".emlx", as with Searchlight.
Just realised I should have clicked on the Search magnifying glass.
Found loads of .emlx files, of course. No unusual locations. But I DID find an unexpected one. I found that I had copied my Mailboxes at the time of upgrading to 10.6 and then going back to 10.5. I must have been wiser then than I thought!
I'll need to study these. But (a) the messages are clearly visible, when I click on them (in EasyFind), and (b) some of them clearly have attachments. Some of the first ones I looked at were damaged images. But we're getting somewhere!
I'll get back when I've had a closer look - whether with good or bad news.
THANKS, once again.
Mike
Whew, OK Mike, looking forward to getting this all straight. 🙂
Hi again
Just to let you know that I am happy with results so far. I have imported mailboxes from the ones I had copied for safety, and found the particular old-message attachments I was looking for when I discovered the problem. I think the damaged attachments I mentioned earlier arose from a quite different problem, some time ago (probably when I was trying to clean things up...)
It will take me a time to sort out duplicated messages and things like that. But meanwhile, as I said, I am delighted with the outcome.
And EasyFind was a real find!
Thanks so much.
Mike
Blank Mail messages
