Wanted: can the following OS fix be scripted and is anyone willing?

Question

hr101 Author

Level 1

0 points

Wanted: can the following OS fix be scripted and is anyone willing?

Help a user find a designated folder created by Mail.app in the Finder e.g. 'Users/[your name]/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes/Repair.xmbox'.
Then search through the folder structure and for each .emlx message just in that designated folder, open each email with TextEdit.app say, search for instances of 'base 64' and replace with '8bit' and save

This fix seems to address the issue being discussed here and obviously automating the steps would be a huge time saver.

MacBook Pro (15-inch Mid 2012), OS X Yosemite (10.10.2)

Posted on Apr 2, 2015 10:26 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Niel

Community+ 2026

Level 10

742,739 points

Apr 2, 2015 10:29 AM in response to hr101

Download TextWrangler, choose Multi-File Search from the Search menu, press the Other button, and perform a search and replace on that folder.

(125324)

Reply

Answer 2

hr101 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 2, 2015 10:56 AM in response to Niel

Thanks for the suggestion Niel. Can't figure out how to select a hidden Library folder via Other though if you have thoughts on that too?

Reply

Answer 3

Niel

Community+ 2026

Level 10

742,739 points

Apr 2, 2015 11:02 AM in response to hr101

Open the Finder's Go menu, press Option, choose Library, and drag the little icon at the top of the window to the Choose Folder dialog.

(125331)

Reply

Answer 4

hr101 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 2, 2015 11:07 AM in response to Niel

Works a treat. Thanks so much.

Reply

Answer 5

Apr 7, 2015 10:53 AM in response to hr101

Try using or modifying the AppleScript I've provided here:

Re: Mail.app- 'Remove Attachments' corrupting mails

Reply

Answer 6

hr101 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 7, 2015 1:26 PM in response to Rich In Space

Thanks for the reply and offering a fix. I'm not having success with the script here though - I can let you have more info if you wished to troubleshoot further but I'm running the public beta of Yosemite so might be best to wait.

Reply

Answer 7

Apr 7, 2015 2:48 PM in response to hr101

Ok, betas can be a bit of a russian roulette.

@hr101: Are you familiar with AppleScripts in general, or are you having basic problems just getting the script to run?

Reply

Answer 8

hr101 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 7, 2015 3:05 PM in response to Rich In Space

Some familiarity but not enough to troubleshoot well.

Initially the script was timing out - didn't capture the error number I'm afraid. Initially I thought not opening a mail and only highlighting it in a list could be the issue but in fact think a TextEdit dialog box was lurking in another Space as quitting TextEdit and then running the script all looked OK.

However on the couple of text emails I've ended up with a different encoding issue and it looks more like html now. Here's a copy of the opening lines of one.

<html>

<head>

compared to what I was originally seeing which was lots and lots of this:

嗁テig拆.畕�呴

Reply

Answer 9

Apr 8, 2015 1:00 AM in response to hr101

Yup, TextEdit must not be blocked by any dialog box or so. No AppleScript can communicate with it then.

In Mail it's enough just to select the message(s) to run the script. No need to open them up.

Regarding the HTML, it seems you have an encoding problem different from mine. But I'll have a look at it and see if I can find a quick fix.

Reply

Answer 10

Apr 8, 2015 6:24 AM in response to hr101

hr101 wrote:

Here's a copy of the opening lines of one.

<html>

<head>

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">

compared to what I was originally seeing which was lots and lots of this:

嗁テig拆.畕�呴

hr101, Is there a chance you could share with me here any of these mails in raw format - before you ran my script?

Reply

Answer 11

hr101 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 9, 2015 12:16 AM in response to Rich In Space

Yep, no problem. I've dropped an eml here. Any good like this?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dnclmc7y82gz1rg/Pitchero%20Club%20Conference%20-%20Wor kshop%20Choices.eml?dl=0

Reply

Answer 12

Apr 9, 2015 6:45 AM in response to hr101

hr101 wrote:

Yep, no problem. I've dropped an eml here. Any good like this?

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dnclmc7y82gz1rg/Pitchero%20Club%20Conference%20-%20Wor kshop%20Choices.eml?dl=0

Perfect hr101. That allowed me to easily find the problem and fix it. It turned out to be just a missing line-ending character. Please, use the revised AppleScript version in the parallel thread above.

Reply

Answer 13

hr101 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 10, 2015 1:12 AM in response to Rich In Space

Having mixed results with the new script but can't isolate when it does work and when it doesn't. Yesterday fixed one mail in amongst multiple failures.

Today fixed two and then failed and subsequently the script seems to time out every time now. Have quit all editors to ensure no dialogs are background processes are still running but still no success.

It seems to have something to do with searching for results and trying to fix a mail when it's the result of a search or because the mail has been moved off the server to local mailboxes maybe...

error "TextEdit got an error: AppleEvent timed out." number -1712

If I use a different editor - Text Wrangler - same outcome.

error "TextWrangler got an error: AppleEvent timed out." number -1712

Reply

Answer 14

Apr 10, 2015 2:14 AM in response to hr101

To me this seems like you don't have the necessary priviligies to open the file that the mail is stored in. Could this be the case?

What does it look like inside TextEdit when this happens (during script execution but before the time-out)? Did the TextEdit icon suddenly bounce in the Dock to indicate an error?

Reply

Answer 15

hr101 Author

Level 1

0 points

Apr 10, 2015 3:08 AM in response to Rich In Space

Permissions might be it. Not clear why some of my mailboxes would have a problem but indeed running the script with the same mail selected in certain mailboxes does seem to be where the script fails on closer review. When it does fail, TextEdit doesn't appear to launch at all. The script cog wheel runs for 30-40 seconds and then fails mostly without any error or pops a little red cross in the script run menu. Only when I run the script from Editor do I get the error message. I'll do more digging my side as this does seems to be me now not the script. Thanks for your patience and support so far.

Reply