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Mail problem from a Time Machine backup

Hi,

After I restored my wife's MBP with Time Machine, she tried to start 'Mail' and she gets a message:

"Mail needs to import your messages (etc)..."


So when I select 'continue' it shows an absurdly high # 52,847 messages and it gets up to 981 photos and videos, then it stays there for hours. If I cancel, the next time I try it gets to 980, then the next time 979 and so forth, dropping 1 number each time and it always hangs for hours, till I turn it off.


If I try to restore Mail by itself, from the backup, I get a message:

"Mail can't be modified or deleted because it's required by Mac OSX."


So in essence she cannot open her Mail program.


What can I do to get the Mail program up and running?

imac, ipod, touch, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Dec 1, 2015 4:19 PM

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Question marked as Best reply

Posted on Dec 6, 2015 11:39 AM

Well, problem solved.


I did a TM reinstalll on a previous backup and got the same result with mail, so I just got her to run the import as long as she could.


Problem went away.

Thanks anyhow

13 replies

Dec 7, 2015 8:08 AM in response to frozenflyboy

frozenflyboy wrote:


...so I just got her to run the import as long as she could.


I have exactly the same problem. I had to restore my (El Capitan) system from a Time Machine backup because the HDD failed and I had to replace it. After the restore was done, Mail startet an "import" of all mails, and the first time it stopped at 26450 of 43257 mails. After a day of waiting I canceled it and started mail again, this time it stopped at 26449 and so on.


Can you specify what you did to solve this? If I cancel the import when it stops doing anything the next time it just starts again from the beginning. How can I use mail again?


Thanks!

Dec 7, 2015 9:18 AM in response to MccoQy

MccoQy,

We went into our Gmail acct and trashed all of the emails there. There was nowhere near as many emails there as the dialogue box suggested. No idea why it made no difference. I think it was a God thing. Moon and stars had to be aligned. 😉


Csound, why does it take so long? Makes no sense as it doesn't take that long to upload a complete backup.

Dec 7, 2015 10:00 AM in response to frozenflyboy

frozenflyboy wrote:


So how long would it normally take?


Why did it show me 52, 847 emails, when she regularly prunes them?

Surely it shouldn't take three days as the other responder said.

You have to set a time frame for them to be removed from the email server. For instance -I have my main email accounts setup to purge from the server 24 hours after download. I can delete them on my mac immediately but they don't disappear from the server for 24 hours.


For my mac mail - I have it set to not synchronize with the server - and to remove after download.


Your wife's email may be set to never delete them -- and the restore of the system triggered a re-download of them all.

Dec 8, 2015 12:26 PM in response to MccoQy

Ok, I solved the problem as well, although it was different. For me the problem was a message stored locally in a folder called "old mails".


First, mail is storing logs during import in /Users/<username>/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail/ in a file ending with _Library.log (e.g. 2015-12-04_Library.log). In this log I found for all runs nearly the same message as last entry:


Dec 5 08:53:01 <computername> Mail[420] <Debug>: Thread: 0x600000068800 Writing emlx data for message: M{5812:Te*:2009-05-27 14:42:56 GMT+2} /Users/<username>/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes/Old Mails.mbox/<some_account>.mbox/sent.mbox/737EB0D9-XXXX-4FCD-XXXX-BCCFXXXX2C8C/D ata/8/3/Messages/38320.emlx at path: /Users/<username>/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes/Old Mails.mbox/<some_account>.mbox/sent.mbox/EEC291C4-XXXX-4CCB-XXXX-B736A7XXX984/D ata-T0x600000068800-3k4vpC/8/2/Messages/28548.emlx


In all logfiles it was always 38320.emlx (source?) where the import got stuck, only the second one (28548.emlx, destination?) was counting down with each run. I checked 38320.emlx in Finder, and tried to view this file with Quicklook. Here I saw the reason (I think so) for the problem, the mail was a sent mail encrypted with S/MIME but the private key wasn't in my keychain anymore. I found 2 other mails in that folder with encryption turned on as well. I deleted (backuped) these files and restarted Mail. Import was done in 12 Minutes!

Mail problem from a Time Machine backup

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