Mojave: Can't open Mail Preferences

Leroy, thank you. I just did this and it worked for restoring the preferences but now ALL of my self=created mailboxes, about 50, have completely DISAPPEARED -- yikes, my whole life is in those mailboxes and I cannot find them or restore them, pls help asap !! Thanks

This is amazing. Thanks so much Leroy. It's worked for me. I have no idea what your instructions did or how on earth anyone would know what to do without these forums!

Keshari1 - I thought I had lost all my folders too but they were just collapsed and could be displayed by expanding with the + sign.

leroydouglas. After almost 3 hours Chat and on the phone with Apple support and escalation team where they had me start in safe mode, reload Mojave, create a new account, and several other things I cant remember.... All to NO avail, I tried your suggestion. It took 30 seconds and solved my issue. THANK YOU!!!!

Two interesting things I wonder if you could comment on:

1. Since this was so confounding to Apple Support Specialist, what was the issue, and how did you come up with a workable solution?
2. Thinking back, during my conversation with *** (;-/), I mentioned your proposed solution, and he said "Apple doesn't support that method, and I cant advise you to do that", but he didn't say don't do it... Wonder if he knew your solution would resolve the problem, but was restrained from saying so.... Thoughts??

I have exactly the same problem and went through all the suggested fixes. It did work in Safe mode (test) but not in regular mode. I just saw someone saying the problem started when changing the color in indent mode and I realized that's exactly what happened to me. So what do I do now that I tried everything else?

Following your instructions, I got my preferences back (after many hours) but all my mailboxes disappeared (I had an intricate filing system that worked well for years). I tried rebuild but it didn't work because the mailboxes are missing. I spent more hours trying to import them from my Time Machine backup but can't find them. Where are they stored?

I have the same issue. My preferences window is blank and stuck on Rules.

applecrack wrote:

This solution worked perfectly...

Do you know why this happened in the first place?

Ghost in the machine? :-)

Good computing applecrack ! Yes, ghost in the machine.

I did and it worked. I wonder if it's OK to remove the Selected Items folder now? Thanks leroydouglas!!

yaaaaaaas! It's working again. Ditching the preference did the trick. Thank you!

Thought was just me. I’m in the same boat.

I can't find the directory "container" ? Nor do I can find com.apple.mail when I search for it. Any ideas? Thank you

Unfortunately the solution was short-lived. Mail preferences window is once again blank.