Mail won't load

Question

Mail won't load

A friend of mine can't open Mail. When she tries, she gets a message saying that Mail can't update her boxes because her box is full.

I know how to create new boxes and move mail from her inbox to them once Mail is open, but I don't know what to do if Mail won't open.

Can anyone help, please?

733 MHz PowerPC G4, Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Posted on Feb 7, 2007 6:32 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Allan Sampson

Level 10

123,677 points

Feb 7, 2007 6:45 AM in response to Dorothy Barnett

Sounds like your friend is also using Tiger Mail and if so, this is a problem with the Envelope Index file which stores an index of all messages.

Quit Mail first and using the Finder go to Home > Library > Mail > Envelope Index. Move the Envelope Index file to the Desktop.

Copy the Mail folder and place the copy on the Desktop for backup purposes.

Launch Mail and you will be prompted to import all mailboxes. Select OK and allow this import process to complete. This isn't really importing anything but replacing the removed Envelope Index file and re-indexing all mailboxes/messages.

If this is resolves the problem and after confirming all mailboxes and messages are available, you can delete the copy of the Mail folder and the old Envelope Index file from the Desktop.

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Answer 2

Feb 7, 2007 5:39 PM in response to Allan Sampson

Thanks, Allan!

This evening, I went to my friend's home, and armed with your suggestions, fixed her problem. It turned out that there was a corruption in the index -- at least that's what a message said that came up shortly after rebooting Mail. It said that the corruption would be fixed if I quit out of and relaunched Mail. Which I did, and now it is working fine.

Anyway, thank you. It's nice to be able to contact folks like you who have "the knowledge." Makes me a little bit smarter, also.

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