Where have my filed mails gone since Mavericks?

Ok. Slow down and take a big breath and we will see what we can do. You say that your mail is there, but you missing content. The first thing to try, and it is a very easy step, is to go into mail and select the mailbox that is presenting you problems. Got to you menu and under mailboxes and select rebulid which is the last option under messages. Do this to all of the mailboxes that are causing you grief. This is usually all you have to do. The rebuild will relink all the headers of the mail with the body of the mail.

Hopefully this will clear up your problem, if not post and we will try something else.

First things first...let's see if the problem is with data or instructions.

Triple the cllick the path below, right-click, Services -> Reveal in Finder

~/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes

Now traverse this directory structure to see if your mailbox folders exist.

If they they do, then good news, you haven't lost anything. (The problem is with the app)

Nigel,

One thing that you must understand is that Apple hides your user Library and for good reason. There are several ways of seeing it, but the simplest is to first go to finder. Now hold down the option button as you select the go option in the finder menu.You will see your library contained on the list and click on it. Then select the mail folder then the V2 folder and then Mailboxes. You will see a lot of folders with the extensions .mbox. You should reconize the names of your mailboxes here. If they are not there, then you will have to go back to your timemachine backup to retrive. It may take a while as these files can br huge. It depends on how many files and how many attachments.

Did you by any chance interupt the Rebuild process? When rebuilding, the mailboxes go "blank" for a few minutes while it's rebuilding.

Quit Mail, re-open and try Mailbox->Rebuild again.

disguise wrote:

First things first...let's see if the problem is with data or instructions.

Triple the cllick the path below, right-click, Services -> Reveal in Finder

~/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes

Now traverse this directory structure to see if your mailbox folders exist.

If they they do, then good news, you haven't lost anything. (The problem is with the app)

if you traversed this structure, not only would you see the mailboxes, but the mail messages as well.

Have you tried using this procedure?

Mail (Mountain Lion): Reindex messages

Well, it appears that your mail is intact, it is now a problem with the mail app itself or in is having a problem accessing the files that it needs to.

The best thing to do now it to insure that the files are set properly. To do this properly it should be done on another volume. Mavericks comes with this just for these reasons. What we are going to do is check and correct the file permissions and that the disk structure is not corrupt. Sounds dangerous doesn't it? Damm the torpedoes, we are going in!

The first step it to boot into the recovery partition of your system. restart your system, but cold the command and r on startup and it will come up in the recovery partition. There is very limited options here . The one that we are interested in id the disk utility. Launch disk utility and select your Maverick drive in the left column. In the main window of the app you should see the options repair disk permissions and repair disk. Run both and this will clean up your volume. Restart your system and check your mail.

Use the rebuild command on you mailboxes if the mail is not there. Paintence, it can take a while. I am curous about your two mailboxes with the same name. Are the dates on the file the same? I am holding back on having you modifying any of your files in the library, but if the steps dont work, we mght have to.

There are a few things that you could clarify for me. First, does your mail work? In mail menu bar, could you run the disk doctor. All of the light in front of your connections should go green. Next, I would like you to compose a mail and send it off to another system or a gmail account. Send a mail from the gmail or other system. If all of these work fine, it is doubtful it is mail in itself. How it connects to what library is probably the beast that we are looking at. I am very interested in your library files. Is the duplication just in the Mailboxes folder. Please send a directory so I can look at the files. We will need to make a copy of the whole Mail folder. Careful, this folder can be big. Mine is well over 2G. Make a copy on you desktop by holding down the option key while dragging the Mail file. You should see a copy in both the Library and on your desktop.

We will be "manipulating" some of these files, but I must see the Mailboxes directory first to decide what to do. You can really screw up an account mucking with these files. Patience.

Sorry, it should of been Connection doctor under the window menu in mail. My bad. To get that listing is is a matter of taking a screen capture of when you are looking at the directory. Open the directory in finder. When you have the files displayed on your screen, hold down the command shift and the number 4 as the same time. You will see the cursor change to a target. Just hold down the right mouse button and drag the mouse until the box is covering the information on the screen and let go once the area is selected. It will create either a jpg or a pdf file on your desktop. It will start with screen shot and then the date in the name. Attach it to your response by clicking on the camera in the edit bar above. You could also use command shift 3 and this will automatically include all of what you see on your screen.