mail rules and signatures missing

Question

mail rules and signatures missing

sometime in the last day or two, my signatures and rules have disappeared.

the signature directory appears to still be there, in ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Signatures, although two of the plist files are really small now. when i restore the directory from the one from three days ago, and restart mail, it just stomps on those files again, and leaves no signatures. those files are AccountsMap.plist and AllSignatures.plist. how can i get the application to believe the old files?

was there an update, that changed something about how the plist is read, which is causing it to "clean them up"?

(is there a debug output window i can call up from mail to see what it is doing?)

i havent begun to figure out where the rules are kept. any help there would be appreciated also. . . .

thanx.

ste

Posted on Aug 7, 2014 6:33 PM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Aug 7, 2014 10:56 PM in response to Stephen Knowles

Open the iCloud preference pane and uncheck the box marked Documents & Data.

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Answer 2

Aug 8, 2014 5:32 PM in response to Linc Davis

thanx, but unfortunately, it did not solve the issue. mail keeps stepping on the restored backup copies of the .plist files in the signatures directory.

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Answer 3

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,547 points

Aug 8, 2014 6:33 PM in response to Stephen Knowles

Restoring just the Signatures folder doesn't work. You would have to restore at least the MailData folder, and maybe the whole Mail folder.

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Answer 4

Sep 5, 2014 3:09 PM in response to Linc Davis

The same thing has happened to me. Restoring the entire Mail folder from a Time Machine backup didn't do anything to resolve the missing signatures and rules.

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Answer 5

Mythtery

Level 1

66 points

Sep 21, 2014 7:02 AM in response to Stephen Knowles

My Mail rules went missing after reinstalling a clean build of Mavericks and manually restoring my data (something I've done many times before without any problems). I believe the cause in this case was due to upgrading iCloud to iCloud Drive when I installed iOS8 on my iPad (what with Mavericks not being compatible etc).

Here's what I did to fix it -- working well so far:

Exit Mail (i.e Cmd+Q while Mail is the active window)
Logout of iCloud (via Settings > iCloud). Where prompted keep settings local where possible, otherwise delete from computer.
Disconnect from the internet (unplug the cable or switch off your router / modem)
Open the following path in finder
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData
Enter Time Machine (via toolbar icon at the top of the screen)
Restore the following files from Time Machine:
RulesActiveStatus.plistSyncedRules.plistUnsyncedRules.plist
Click Restore
Open the following path in finder
~/Library/Mobile Documents/com~apple~mail/Data/MailData
Move the following file to the desktop (in the unlikely event that you need to put it back - OSX should recreate a new one later anyway):ubiquitous_SyncedRules.plist
Open Mail (while still offline)
Open Mail Preferences>Rules and you should see your old rules back.
IMPORTANT: Create a couple of new rules. The purpose here is to make the restored plist files update so that it is newer than the one present on iCloud.
Exit Mail.
Open Mail again and just check the rules (via Settings > iCloud) are still in place -- they should be.
Exit Mail.
Reconnect to the internet.
Login to iCloud again (via Settings > iCloud)
Open Mail
Check the rules (via Settings > iCloud) are still in place.
Exit Mail again
Open Mail once more and check if the rules are still in place. Hopefully you'll find your old rules and possibly an additional "News from Apple" rule merged in.

I hope this works for you too. 🙂

I'm guessing you'll need to do something similar with signatures. I.E. Exit Mail, logout of iCloud, Exit Mail, Restore missing signature files, Open Mail, Add a new signature to make the signature file newer than the iCloud one, Exit Mail, Reconnect to internet, Login to iCloud, Open Mail, Check old signatures are back.

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