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User profile for user: sdedalus
sdedalus Author
User level: Level 1
45 points

Power loss, Mail accounts gone, "Welcome to Mail" splash screen

All right, here's what happened:


Using Macbook Air, get low battery warning. Finish what I'm doing, close screen at 0:00 remaining time. Apparently it didn't sleep in time before battery drained completely, since when opening after plugging a minute or two thereafter it went into cold restart. (Btw, I've had the machine just shut down instead of going into deep sleep on low battery a few times before, would like to fix this too...)


All my programs reopened, except Mail loaded the "Welcome to Mail" splash screen, with my name and one of my email addresses autofilled, but none of my regular accounts. I canceled and it closed. Repaired permissions, verified disk, no problems. After searching the forums, turned invisible files on, fired up my Time Machine backup, and restored a recent pre-crash version of Mail preferences plist in user/Library/Preferences. Start up Mail again: same "Welcome to Mail" splash screen.


Called Apple Care, they wanted me to do a full restore from Time Machine backup. But my backup is a week old and I will lose data not covered in the meantime--I still want to find a way to get Mail back working without doing this. The only other suggestion was clear caches, restart, try again. I fired up Onyx, executed maintenance scripts, rebuilt Mail's envelope index, cleared system and user caches, and still no dice.


Any ideas on how to get Mail to recognize my old preferences plist instead of heading straight to the splash screen? To restore to all my email again without a full restore from week old back up?


TIA.

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 13" 2.13 C2D 4GB ram

Posted on Jun 5, 2012 4:19 PM

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15 replies
User profile for user: sdedalus
sdedalus Author
User level: Level 1
45 points

Jun 5, 2012 6:26 PM in response to Shootist007

The Apple low battery warning reads "If you don't [plug in], your computer will go to sleep in a few minutes to preserve its memory contents."


It does not read "If you don't [plug in,] you are a fool and your computer will instantly power down, destroying its memory contents."


With safe sleep, journaling and now resume and autosave features of Lion, I think users have a reasonable expectation that accidentally running the battery down on a mobile computer--a pretty common event--will not result in data loss. If that is an unreasonable expectation, then Apple needs to either change the warning or change the low battery shutdown behaviour.


Perhaps this was an exceptional event. Perhaps it wasn't and you already knew the problems that could result. But I didn't, and given the context don't think I am a fool for not being able to foresee them. Please go enjoy your schadenfreude elsewhere.

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User profile for user: sdedalus
sdedalus Author
User level: Level 1
45 points

Jun 5, 2012 6:34 PM in response to sdedalus

For those who would like the answer, I was able to get my accounts and mail back (including the long draft I was working on at the time, a godsend) by replacing the following TWO files with pre-crash versions from a recent back up.


com.apple.mail.plist

in

~/Library/Preferences


Accounts.plist

in

~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData


With Mail closed. When I opened the program, all emails and accounts were back.


When I spoke to the Applecare operator, he knew only about the first file.

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User profile for user: John Galt
John Galt
User level: Level 10
146,390 points

Jun 5, 2012 6:39 PM in response to sdedalus

I think it was an exceptional event.


It should not have happened, but you have a Time Machine backup so use it. A week's worth of lost data, if you lost even that much, is a small price to pay. If Mail could not decipher its preferences or mailboxes it probably created new ones, resulting in what you see.


Clearing caches and executing maintenance scripts could not have helped. Before you resort to a full TM restoration though, try merely copying your user Library/Mail folder. That will probably restore your mailboxes and their contents and rebuild an appropriate .plist file. However, given the fact your SSD was apparently scrambled you may have other challenges to address.


Edit: I see you found the folders, good job. Make sure everything else is intact before resuming regular Time Machine backups.


Message was edited by: John Galt

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User profile for user: TC!
TC!
User level: Level 1
18 points

Aug 20, 2012 5:54 AM in response to sdedalus

I had the same problem but replacing the two files from a time machine backup made no difference. Mail would welcome me as if it was a new installation and all accounts would be gone.


I got it working by only restoring the accounts.plist file, then it worked fine for me.


Thanks for your help.

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User profile for user: jfaughnan
jfaughnan
User level: Level 3
886 points

Jun 21, 2013 9:19 PM in response to sdedalus

Brilliant. Restoring com.apple.mail.plist is the usual recommendation, but that did nothing for me. OTOH, my ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist was only 1kb, and restoring that did the trick.


Now I need to do some drive diagnostics. There's no way this file should have been corrupted regardless of power outage or crash. The OS is journaled.

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User profile for user: jcw289
jcw289
User level: Level 1
8 points

Feb 18, 2015 11:02 AM in response to sdedalus

I had the same problem, but not caused by a power failure. Mail hung up, I quit normally, and relaunched Mail, only to face a box requesting that I install a mail account. When I cancelled, Mail would quit automatically. There were no messages in the background. All Internet Accounts under System Prefs were intact. Restoring the same two files (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist and ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist) from a Timemachine backup resolved the issue. I did not delete the original files before restoring but renamed them with an underscore in the first position. Interestingly restoring the entire ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData did NOT work. Also, following the rescue, links to replies and to forwarded messages in Mail were broken. However links to messages in Omnifocus and the tags assigned by Mailtags4 were preserved.


MacBook Pro (15-inch, Early 2011)

2.2 GHz Intel Core i7

Yosemite 10.10.2


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User profile for user: nyatan
nyatan
User level: Level 1
0 points

Jul 13, 2015 12:31 AM in response to sdedalus

Worked like a charm. My MBP mid2009, Yosemite with failed battery, it's sleep overnight with portable HDD attached. The battery drained two days later and when It wake up, Mail app ask me to add new account with all mail gone.


I'm so lucky to found this thread. I restored from Time machine 2 file as mentioned in other replies, Mail came back alive. Thank you.


Apple must takes this problem seriously, such caused panic and hard to find the exact solution.

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Power loss, Mail accounts gone, "Welcome to Mail" splash screen

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