Mail rules & sigs GONE (10.8.4)

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Level 1

30 points

Mail rules & sigs GONE (10.8.4)

After a power outage, I rebooted and opened Mail. All my rules and signatures are gone. The "Users/[myname]/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/MessageRules.plist" file shows no changes, nor do the signature files ("Users/[myname]/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Signatures/). I have repaired permissions, restarted Mail, restarted the computer, nothing has helped.

FWIW, my laptop has the same OS version, and same rules, and they seem fine. I'd just copy them over, but since the files seem the same, with the same last modified date, I suspect the problem is elsewhere....

Any way I can A) recover them, or at least convince Mail they exist, or B) Transfer them from my laptop in such a way that Mail will recognize them?

iMac, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.4), 27" 3.4 Ghz Core i7

Posted on Aug 27, 2013 8:25 AM

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Answer 1

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 27, 2013 10:18 AM in response to Ravenmoon

Quick update: I've been tinkering away since posting, and I can add the following info:

I tried the terminal command in this post: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5098219?answerId=22826900022#22826900022 The resulting number was "304." No clue what that means, but there it is.

More generally, here is a list of what I have tried:

-Repaired permissions (Disk Utility)

-Logged out/in

-Restarted

-Restarted with Cmd/Opt/N/V

-Run all chron scripts

-Repaired permissions again, no repairs needed (Cocktail)

-Rebuilt Launch Services DB (Cocktail)

-Rebuilt Mail evenelop DB (Cocktail)

-Checked for corrupt preference files; none found (Cocktail)

-Cleared all caches (user, system, interent) (Cocktail)

-Restarted again

No change; all sigs & rules stull present (by Finder inspection) but missing in Mail.

I also discovered that you cannot more, remove, edit, rename, replace or delete Mail.app, so my attempt to replace it with a working copy from my laptop failed. All files in the Mail folder in user/[name]/Library see to be identical, down the the bit count, so clearly the problem is not in the sig or rules files themselves.

What on earth is going on here?!? 😕

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Answer 2

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Aug 27, 2013 1:08 PM in response to Ravenmoon

Please follow these directions to delete the Mail "sandbox" folder.

Back up all data.

Triple-click the line below on this page to select it:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Reveal

from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a folder named "com.apple.mail" selected. If it does, move the selected folder — not just its contents — to the Desktop. Leave the Finder window open for now.

Log out and log back in. Launch Mail and test. If the problem is resolved, you may have to recreate some of your Mail settings. You can then delete the folder you moved and close the Finder window. If you still have the problem, quit Mail again and put the folder back where it was, overwriting the one that may have been created in its place. Post your results.

Caution: If you change any of the contents of the sandbox, but leave the folder itself in place, Mail may crash or not launch at all. Deleting the whole sandbox will cause it to be rebuilt automatically.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C). In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

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Answer 3

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 27, 2013 2:35 PM in response to Linc Davis

I will try this. (I'm not at my desktop right now.)

I did manage to get the rules back in the interim. It seems I had a set of rules files loose in the V2 folder (with old dates), and a new set in the MailData folder. I copied the old ones over the newly created ones, and the rules were back. No clue how/why this popped up out of the blue, but fixed is fixed. A lot of instances of missing rules seem to be related to iCloud, but I have not had 'Documents and Data' set to sync...

The signatures are still not being read by mail, however, so I will give your solution a try. (I save backups of the rules plist files, so I can replace them yet again if needed!) I'll let you know what happens!

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Answer 4

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 27, 2013 4:12 PM in response to Linc Davis

Ack!!!! No good! The rules (which I had managed to make reappear) stayed there, but everything else went to crud. And the signatures still did not show up. Replaced the folder I moved out, logged in/out again, thankfully everything else is back to normal.

I suppose if I have to rebuild just the signatures, I can... but I'd sure like to know what kind of freak-out was responsible for all this to begin with!

By the way, thanks for the suggestion - just because it didn't seem to help, doesn't mean I don't appreciate the time and effort! 🙂

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Answer 5

Ravenmoon Author

Level 1

30 points

Aug 27, 2013 4:43 PM in response to Ravenmoon

Ok, I had tried replacing the rules plists from a backup, but I think that was before I discovered that the signatures were also gone. (I'm a bit like a terrier with problem like this; I keep worrying at them until something happens!)

So I compared the current Users/[name]/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Signature folder with the backup, and found that in the backup, each sig had 2 files, one a .webarchive, the other a .mailsignature.

Somehow or other, at the same time as the rules files 'migrated,' the .mailsignature files vanished, leaving only the .webarchive versions. I replaced the new folder with the backup, and good to go once more.

NO CLUE how this stuff got all goofed up, and I sure wish I did, but then that's why we keep backups, I suppose.... In any case, it's fixed in the sense that it works, even if not solved in that I know what went wrong. Pick your battles, eh? Thanks for the suggestions in any case!

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