my containers com.apple.mail folder is missing os x 7

Question

my containers com.apple.mail folder is missing os x 7

My mail programme started to play up.

The swirly circle of death and could only force quit mail with the re open windows message and submit report to apple option.

I have seen other posts and followed them but nothing worked.

Then …. it just launched whilst the circle was swirling for ages whilst searching for a solution.

But all my folders have gone in mail.

All the solutions I can find require me to find the com.apple.mail folder in containers but its not there.

There does seem to be a record of all the accounts in my mail folder in finder.

I do not (I know I'm a muppet) have time machine up and running.

MacBook Air, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Aug 4, 2015 11:33 AM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

239,273 points

Aug 4, 2015 1:06 PM in response to philfromkeswick

Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.

(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive & clear caches.)

Get Find Any File...

http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/

Choose Name contains... mail

dd Choice... Is a Folder

Hold Option or alt key when selecting Find to Find All.

What all results do you get?

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Answer 2

Aug 5, 2015 2:50 AM in response to BDAqua

Hi

Thanks for the reply.

Done safe boot etc.

Still no mail folders

find any file result.

file://localhost/Users/******my name*****/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail/

There are other results but are for different users and help files etc

This seems to be the relevant one.

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

239,273 points

Aug 5, 2015 9:57 AM in response to philfromkeswick

Hmmmm, now try Find any File but with Name... Ends in...

.emlx

(dot ee em el ex)

Any in your User's folder?

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Answer 4

Aug 9, 2015 7:39 AM in response to BDAqua

Hi,

Sorry for the delay, been away for a few days.

Searched with no results.

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

239,273 points

Aug 9, 2015 10:19 AM in response to philfromkeswick

Hmmmm!?

Any chance you renamed your account?

Are there any .emlx files in any user account there?

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Answer 6

Aug 11, 2015 4:38 AM in response to BDAqua

Not renamed it.

No .emlx files found at all.

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Answer 7

Aug 11, 2015 4:39 AM in response to philfromkeswick

The only thing still there is a RSS feed that I have.

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Answer 8

Aug 11, 2015 5:07 AM in response to philfromkeswick

However,

I have tried to re setup some accounts manually.

When I try to it just hangs with the circle.

Can only force quiet (reads Mail not responding) and offers me the option of reporting it to apple.

Sooo frustrating and not remotely funny.

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Answer 9

BDAqua

Level 10

239,273 points

Aug 11, 2015 11:34 AM in response to philfromkeswick

What all files are in this folder?

Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail

Does this file exist?

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

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Answer 10

Aug 11, 2015 12:11 PM in response to BDAqua

It does exist in the root path you say to look in.

The folder that I can't find is the containers com.apple.mail which other threads told me to look for.

I have tried moving /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist to the trash folder as advised in other threads.

This works for a short time.

It does not get my old accounts back.

It works only in so much as it lets me open mail - click preferences and open that window - if I then click one of the other tabs such as general it goes into the spinning cheese mode again and then again force quit - report to apple.

Its almost as though as mail starts to run it corrupts a file.

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Answer 11

BDAqua

Level 10

239,273 points

Aug 11, 2015 12:34 PM in response to philfromkeswick

Yikes, I'm afraid all your Mail is really gone, though you might try recovery software before you use the Mac anymore, you'll need an external drive to save to...

They have a free demo to see what it could recover.

rccharles on file recovery...

"Stellar Phoenix Macintosh - Mac data recovery software, recovers data from damaged, deleted, or corrupted volumes and even from initialized disks."

They have a trial version, so I guess you can see if your data can be recovered...

http://www.stellarinfo.com/mac-data-recovery.htm

FileSalvage is an extremely powerful Macintosh application for exploring and recovering deleted files from a drive or volume. FileSalvage is designed to restore files that have:

* been accidentally deleted.

* become unreadable due to media faults.

* been stored on a drive before it was re-initialized/formatted.

http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id= 1

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=11073082#11073082

Data Rescue...

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

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