How to reset mail to factory settings.

Quit Mail.

In the Finder, hold down the option key and select

Go ▹ Library

from the menu bar. Move the following items from the folder that opens to the Trash (some may not exist):

• Caches/com.apple.mail
• Saved Application State/com.apple.mail.savedState
• Application Support/AddressBook/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr
• Containers/com.apple.mail
• Mail
• Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
• Preferences/com.apple.mail.searchhistory.plist

Note: you are not moving the Mail application. You’re moving a folder named “Mail.”

Would the below response still work for El Capitan 10.11 and Mail Version 9.0 for reseting Apple Mail?

Reply Helpfulby Linc Davis on Jun 21, 2013 8:17 AM

Quit Mail.

In the Finder, hold down the option key and select

Go ▹ Library

from the menu bar. Move the following items from the folder that opens to the Trash (some may not exist):

• Caches/com.apple.mail
• Saved Application State/com.apple.mail.savedState
• Application Support/AddressBook/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr
• Containers/com.apple.mail
• Mail
• Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
• Preferences/com.apple.mail.searchhistory.plist

Note: you are not moving the Mail application. You’re moving a folder named “Mail.”

The e-mails will still take up space on your computer, but try going to Mail/Mailbox/Export Mailbox. If the e-mails remain in the mailbox, delete them. You can then save the exported mailbox as an archive. To access the e-mails, Mail/File/Import Mailbox.

Thanks a lot from France.

I only found and trashed the following files :

> MailRecents-v4.abcdmr

> com.apple.mail

> Mail

And my previous e-mails have been downloaded from my Gmail account. Perfect.

Thanks again !

I followed these instructions but Mail wouldn't let me re-add the email account, Settings > Internet Accounts and unchecking, rechecking Mail had no affect. However, removing all the previous Mail accounts completely and re-adding them has gotten Mail working like new.

Linc, Thanks for this, it's not the first time you have been of indirect help to me and many others I assume.

This one tip was needed to get rid of a very nasty and persistent state of Mail, after a series of beta Yosemite previews and consequent updates. At one given moment the mail app must have had a tiny thingie nuked leaving it in an unusable state. No addition of an account was possible, not accounts that were set up in SysPrefs / Internet accounts were being loaded.

I now have my main bug resolved. Not really a bug, as another user account on the same machine had no problems, so I considered this to be a state of bad luck for the given account.

Cheers!

Just installed the 10.11 beta, everything works great EXCEPT Mail...its pretty useless...When open my entire system comes to a crawl...when I finally manage to close it, everything returns to normal....any tips?

HI!

This saved my day (s). Since june my Mail app did not work and I have tried a number of ways to get it going again.

When I saw this post I realised that before I did not remove the

Application Support/AddressBook/MailRecents-v4.abcdmr

away. This combination did the trick.

Very very grateful .

I am running Sierra. When my problem started it was still El Capitan.

This solution was helpful (and allowed a baseline reset of Apple Mail to try to re-enter account information), however it appears that Apple Mail does not work with IMAP mail servers at Network Solutions (previous Apple Mail version did work with IMAP servers at Network Solutions). The Network Solutions support staff indicated they are working with apple on this issue for macOS Sierra however we are forced (in the mean-time) to use Microsoft Outlook on macOS or other email clients that do work with Network Solutions mail servers. This has been an issue for such a long time that we're not sure if we will ever be able to use Apple's native mail application - perhaps this issue will be addressed over the next 1-2 years but it seems like a low priority for Apple right now.

Any alternative suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

So my email is a complete mess to begin With having like 17 different emails half of which I forgot passwords to... me being me a self proclaimed tech savvy cellphone genius decided to switch a bunch of crap around so much so that I don't even get my apple emails anymore or half of any of my emails due to me making and deleting folders and swapping places ..... yadahh yaddah

I want me email on my iphone7+ to go back to basic setup as it was before .... inbox. sent . Drafts. Etc etc

Is it too late to fix my mistake

Ps I don't have access to a mac or MacBook or computer of any sort ......

Annnnnnnnnnnd go ... lol

Linc hasn't posted in awhile. You might want to consider starting a new discussion. Since this one is marked solved and is a couple of years old, less people are likely to look at it. A new post would be much more visible. You can link to this one.

Settings/Mail - delete the accounts and add them back.

I don't know if there is still someone here but let's try.

I have a problem with this file "V2" it is really heavy (11 Gigas) I would like to lighten it or even to delete it to make Mail not so a heavy application. What can I do if I want to conserve one year of past emails in my box, for instance?

Thank you very much!

Thank you very much for your help Eric. In fact I mistaked myself and the one that is really huge is V4. As I need it I have just spent a couple of hours deleting old heavy emails with some files attached and archiving the year 2016. I clearly need to start deleting every email that is not useful if not I loose the control on my mailboxes.

My problem with the Mail app is that it takes long time to send messages and after each reboot it cannot properly set the SMTP settings for my accounts and additionally I cannot remove old settings from accounts which I am no longer using (the mail app lists them in the SMTP server list).

I would like to reset the mail app to factory settings.

I followed your steps but it doesn't help in macOS High Sierra. Do you have an updated solution ?

Thanks