Mail says "Create a new account" but I have years of mail

Question

Mail says "Create a new account" but I have years of mail

I've been using Apple Mail on all my Macs for years. Today on a slow Wifi connection it kept trying to download mail, but after several minutes of it nothing was happening. I forced Mail to close.

Now when I click on the Mail icon it shows an empty Mail window with no accounts and wants me to create a new account. But I have several Apple, Google, and Outlook accounts in mail. It seems like it doesn't recognize them.

Is there a plist or something I can delete to point Mail to the right data? What do I do?

Thank you.

Posted on Feb 2, 2016 2:05 PM

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Answer 1

Feb 2, 2016 2:53 PM in response to orchestramusic

Care to share which OS you are using as well as which version of Mail?

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Thanking you for your anticipated cooperation.

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Answer 2

Feb 2, 2016 5:49 PM in response to Baby-Boomer-USofA

Yes, I should have included this information. The Mac is a 15" mid-2012 MacBook Pro with 8GB running Yosemite, 10.10.5. There have been no hardware modifications to the MBP. According to System Information, Mail is version 8.2.

FYI, I have a older desktop Mac Pro running the same software and basically the same configuration for Mail. I can get into Mail just fine on that machine.

I suppose I could create one user profile so I can open the empty mail program. Then I could then enter all the other Mail user profiles on the MBP. Will that restore all of the mail on the various servers? Will it destroy anything on the servers? Or will it affect my ability to access mail from the Mac Pro?

Thanks for your reply.

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Answer 3

Feb 2, 2016 9:53 PM in response to orchestramusic

I searched other sites for a solution to this problem. I found one that suggested that I go into Time Machine and replace two files with versions before the problem began. They are ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail-shared.plist and ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist.

I did this and it seems to have worked. All of my mail addresses and all of the old emails are exactly where I left them.

Thank you for offering to help. I hope that this post can help anyone else who may get the same problem.

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