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OS X 10.9.1, Mail still puts messages back in the Inbox

A couple of days ago I downloaded and installed Mavericks over Mountain Lion. I now have OS X 10.9.1.


Apple Mail keeps putting messages back in the Inbox after I move or trash them. The fix is supposed to be the Mail Update for Mavericks. I downloaded the update and tried to install it, and it tells me "Mail Update for Mavericks can't be installed on this disk. This volume does not meet the requirements for this update."


Funny. The only requirement shown for the update on the download page is that I have Mavericks.


Is there a fix I can use? When? Where? How?

Posted on Dec 28, 2013 7:13 PM

Reply
20 replies

Dec 29, 2013 6:16 AM in response to marty39

Correction: only after I move them. Trashed messages stay trashed.


Usually, the moved messages stay out of the Inbox until I look at another mailbox and then come back to the Inbox. They're still also where I moved them. When I move them again there is still only one of each in the mailbox I move them to. Looks like a labeling issue, not actual duplication.


But I still want to be able to clean my Inbox.


P.S. I wish I could edit my question directly the way I edited this reply to myself.

Dec 29, 2013 12:41 PM in response to marty39

Quit Mail. Force quit if necessary.


Back up all data. That means you know you can restore the Mail database, no matter what happens.


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

~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData


Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select


Go Go to Folder


from the menu bar. Paste into the box that opens (command-V), then press return.


A folder window will open. Inside it there should be files with names as follows:


  • Envelope Index
  • ExternalUpdates.storedata


Move those files to the Desktop, leaving the window open. Other files in the folder may have longer names that begin as above. Move those files, if any, to the Trash.

Log out and log back in. Relaunch Mail. It should prompt you to re-import your messages. You may get a warning that the index is damaged and that Mail has to quit. Click OK. Warning: The process may take hours if you have gigantic mailboxes. For reasonable-sized mailboxes, it should only take a few minutes.


Test. If Mail now works as expected, you can delete the files you moved to the Desktop. Otherwise, post your results.

Dec 30, 2013 7:27 AM in response to Linc Davis

Told Time Machine to Back Up Now. Went away for an hour or two. Came back.


Finder. Go. Go to Folder: ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData. The folder can't be found.


Went to the folder by navigating in Finder. Moved 2 files to Desktop, 4 to Trash.


Log out, Log in, open Mail, Importing Mail. Took countless hours (archives go back to 1995).


Next morning:


A few emails I had read and archived are now marked as unread.


My wife is getting repeats of rule-based forwarded emails from a few months ago.


The few emails I moved to archive folders this morning have not come back to the Inbox.


Is there an explanation why these things happened or is it just magic?

Dec 30, 2013 2:15 PM in response to Linc Davis

I'm not sure either. It looked like a solution to the problem, but at considerable cost: the time to do it, and the annoyances of repeat forwarding and old emails marked as unread.


Something funny just happened. I moved an email from the Inbox to an archive folder, and it disappeared from the Inbox, reappeared for a split second, and disappeared again as a new email appeared in the Inbox. I hope that's just an artifact of time delays in communication between the Mail app on my computer and Gmail in the cloud.


So I'll withhold judgment for a few days until I'm convinced Mail is behaving itself.


I noticed that the folder in ~/Library/Mail/V2 that relates to imap.gmail.com takes up more disk space than I'm using on the Google site.Not really a problem, as it's only a small fraction of my entire disk. But I thought IMAP was supposed to store everything on the server. Apparently it's storing everything locally as well.

Jan 1, 2014 7:37 AM in response to marty39

I just noticed another aspect of the "considerable cost" of this solution. I have 13819 messages in the Sent folder, going back to 1996. I think that includes all the messages I filed in various specific topic folders ("archive" folders).


Worse yet, the messages don't disappear from the Sent folder when moved to another folder. The original problem is still there in a different form. The original problem was that Mail didn't remove the Inbox tag. Now it doesn't remove the Sent tag.


How can I remove the "this solved my question" flag?

Jan 1, 2014 11:20 AM in response to marty39

Gmail is an intentionally broken implementation of IMAP that often causes problems with Mail. The problem seems to have gotten worse in Mavericks. My recommendation is either not to use Gmail at all, or to access it through the website. You may also get better results from another email client.

If you insist on trying to make Gmail work with Mail, the following links may help:

Configuring OS X Mail For Gmail Without Duplicates

Mail in Mavericks Changes the Gmail Equation

Gmail ... IMAP ... Mac Mail ... Mavericks ... SOLUTION

Jan 1, 2014 5:23 PM in response to Linc Davis

You may also get better results from another email client.

Such as?

If you insist on trying to make Gmail work with Mail, the following links may help:

Configuring OS X Mail For Gmail Without Duplicates

Not relevant. It was written for Lion.

Mail in Mavericks Changes the Gmail Equation

I never disabled showing All Mail. I didn't see any serious problems with Mail in Mountain Lion. I had serious problems when I upgraded to Mavericks. After applying the solution to the problem of messages not disappearing from the Inbox, now all the messages I moved from Sent to custom folders are back in the Sent folder.

Gmail ... IMAP ... Mac Mail ... Mavericks ... SOLUTION

I could try that.

May I express my frustration with software engineers who can't tell the difference between an operating system and a suite of applications? An operating system is a platform that supports applications. Mail is an application. There's no need to radically change Mail just because you're upgrading the OS. On the contrary, an upgraded OS should be designed to support existing applications without requiring the applications to be updated. That means, incidentally, that no application (e.g., Apple Mail, Microsoft Internet Explorer) should be so integrated into the OS that the OS is dependent on it. If software developers observed that principle, we wouldn't have this mess.


Jan 1, 2014 6:57 PM in response to Linc Davis

Flame on:


Well. Linc, let me explain why I chose Gmail. It has been around for a long time, it's operated by a stable company, it provides plenty of storage for archived email, it's free, and nobody told me until now that it doesn't comply with the IMAP standard.


Let me also explain why I directed my frustration at Apple and not Google. When I upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks, it was the Mail app, not Gmail, that changed.The previously existing Mail app worked with Gmail or could be made to work with Gmail. There was no need to change it when the underlying OS changed, except as needed to use a new API.


Furthermore, if you're upset about ads, direct your frustration at Google, not me. I didn't put the ads there, and there aren't any ads in either the email I send or the email I receive. And it isn't only Gmail that invades your privacy.


I don't want to give up email, and I certainly don't want to use the Gmail web interface because it pretends to be smarter than I am.


Flame off.


1. I use Apple Mail to compose mail because I can get mail from multiple POP and IMAP servers, select which SMTP server to use, choose among different signatures, etc., and the Mail app was right there on the dock.


2. I use a "permanent email address" that does not store mail, but immediately forwards it wherever I told it to. I told it to forward to Gmail for reasons I enumerated above.


3. I use Apple Mail to fetch my mail from Gmail. I now have about 2GB of archived mail on the Google servers.


I've gone through the Sent folder and moved about ten thousand email messages from Sent to the custom folders that I had already moved them to before Mavericks. There are still about three thousand remaining and I don't remember where I originally archived them. Some of them may have multiple labels, but when I search them in Mail, the app only tells me they're in All Mail, and I don't know how to make Gmail tell me anything useful.


Can you suggest an email client that has the features I use in Apple Mail, and preferably can show the labels that Gmail attaches to each message?


Or is there another way out? If I manage to distribute the Sent messages to other folders, will they stay there? Will Apple Mail work properly after that? No, that's the wrong question. Will it do what I want without breaking something else?

OS X 10.9.1, Mail still puts messages back in the Inbox

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