I keep having to restart mail to see e-mails that are 'not downloaded'...

You probably have the problem described in the following article:

Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty

It looks like you’re just starting to experience the problem and doing what the article suggests might work for you. If it doesn’t, post back with your observations indicating what type of mail account is this (POP, IMAP, .Mac).

As David provided, this error message (which is not accurate) indicates an "overstuffed" mailbox issue which means the mailbox has approached or exceeded the recommended size limit or the mailbox has some corruption.

The recommended mailbox size limit for Jaguar and Panther Mail is 1GB and for Tiger Mail, 2GB. An overstuffed mailbox issue can occur at any mailbox size but is more likely to occur depending on the number and size of message attachments contained in the mailbox but especially as a mailbox approaches or exceeds the recommended size limit.

This has all but been eliminated with Tiger Mail.

If this Inbox mailbox is for a POP account, quit Mail first and using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail > this POP account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account) > INBOX.mbox.

Move the INBOX.mbox to the Desktop.

Launch Mail and a new INBOX.mbox will be created automatically by Mail within the account named folder.

This will allow the Mail.app to function properly again and not risk losing any new messages downloaded while working on the old INBOX.mbox moved to the Desktop to recover the existing messages.

Control-click on the old INBOX.mbox moved to the Desktop and at the menu window that appears, select Show Package Contents.

List the package content file names and size of each. This information is required to determine the next steps to take to recover the existing messages.

If this Inbox mailbox is for an IMAP account, quit Mail first and using the Finder go to Home > Library > Mail > this IMAP account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account) > INBOX.imapmbox.

Move the INBOX.imapmbox to the Desktop.

Launch Mail and a new INBOX.imapmbox will be created automatically by Mail within the account named folder.

If the new Inbox mailbox for the IMAP account is not automatically synchronized with the server, select the account's Inbox mailbox in the mailboxes drawer which should force synchronization with the server and this will resolve the problem and if so, you can delete the old INBOX.imapmbox from the Desktop.

I too was seeing the 'take account online etc.' messages which I've learned are actually 'overstuffed mailbox' problems. I ignored msgs until finally turning mail on/off did not show input messages at all but only the 'take account ...' msg.

I thought the problem would go away if I just started deleting some old large messages in my inbox. I deleted only a few dozen and quit mail. I then saw a 'compaction' error msg. Getting back into mail, only a couple hundred msgs were in my inbox ('on my mac') - zero msgs in my POP account - out of more than 10,000 when I started deleting. I checked inbox.mbox and sure enough, only a couple hundred msgs.

Now amazingly the day before this, I backed up my imac to an external drive. (my husband nags me!) Assuming the missing inbox messages on my primary drive are 'gone', what's the best way to get my inbox messages from the backup on my external drive to my primary drive without getting the 'compaction' error etc. all over again ?? Excuse basic questions here - I just don't do this very often !

Thank you for whatever assistance you can offer,
Patty Brown
Sunnyvale, CA

iMac, flatpanel,800 MHz G4, su Mac OS X (10.3.9)

What’s the capacity and space available on the startup disk?

Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:

The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what’s it all about?

After having fixed all the filesystem issues, if any, and ensuring that there’s enough space available on the startup disk (a few GB), you should be able to fix the problem using the procedure I provided in the following thread, for example:

Rebuilt Mailbox, Inbox emails gone!

Recovering your mail from the backup would require importing it, which you should be able to do using a similar procedure if you cannot import it by normal means.

My hard disk (primary) is partitioned. The half I use has these numbers:

27.8 GB capacity
4.5 GB available

I'll review your first response carefully.
Thanks,
Patty Brown
Sunnyvale, CA

Ok, while working on this 'overstuffed' situation, I'm finding some things that don't look right.
I looked up 'INBOX.mbox' in FINDER and found FOUR instances !!

~/LIB/KEYCHAINS/MAIL/POP.../INBOX.mbox (found my 3G + here)
~/LIB/MAIL/POP.../INBOX.mbox
~/LIB/MAIL/MAILBOXES/INBOX.mbox
~/LIB/KEYCHAINS/MAIL/MAILBOXES/INBOX.mbox

Doing a dbl click from within FINDER will bring up two screens each for the above four instances - what a mess !
Which of these four instances is correct ?
Once I save what I want, can I just get rid
of three of these ?

Thanks, truly appreciate any help here.
Patty Brown
Sunnyvale CA

You’re welcome.

This doesn’t make sense. There should be no Mail folder in ~/Library/Keychains/, if that’s what you mean. There should only be keychains there, i.e. files with a .keychain extension...

For a mailbox to be accessible from Mail, it has to be in ~/Library/Mail/. INBOX.mbox, in particular, should only appear within an account folder. The INBOX.mbox that you have in ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/ shouldn’t be there and probably appears as an On My Mac Inbox in Mail. Mailboxes stored out of ~/Library/Mail/ must be imported in order to make them available in Mail.

BTW, please type file paths using the exact names and capitalization. Disguise only the confidential information (e.g. email address) they might reveal. You can copy & paste or drag the file/folders into TextEdit, for example, to avoid having to type their names if you want.

Let me say right away that my mail is working pretty well.
The 'In' screen shows all mail that has come in since last week when prob began. I can access all standard and created mailboxes and they have all my old emails BUT, sometimes mail opens with 'Mailboxes' icon inaccessible requiring me to use 'go to' in 'Mailbox' - or maybe mail opens with multiple screens -- oh well.

Moving right along . . . after your last response . . .
I wish this made sense also but there IS a Mail folder in ~/Library/Keychains/

Below I've retyped the four file paths I found for 'INBOX.mbox'

1 ~Library/Keychains/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox
2 ~Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox
3 ~Library/Mail/Mailboxes/INBOX.mbox
4 ~Library/Keychains/Mail/Mailboxes/INBOX.mbox

The only '.Keychain' extension I could find was in:
System/Library/Keychains/System.keychain

It appears that I should move the Mail folder from
~/Library/Keychains/ to the Desktop - right ?
(There are some old emails I might want to save.)

That should remove paths 1 & 4 from this discussion ?

You said that the INBOX.mbox in path 3 shouldn't be there - I removed it ! (it was 'on my Mac'.)

Now ~Lib/Mail/Mailboxes seems to have a complete list of mail boxes that I created and the 'standard' ones except for INBOX.mbox .
~Lib/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/ has INBOX.mbox and other 'standard' mailboxes but none I created.

Am I getting closer to a proper mail environment ?

You have been most helpful and patient - THANK YOU
I do not 'bounce' spam ! (joke)

Patty Brown
Sunnyvale, CA








iMac, flatpanel,800 MHz G4, su Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Yes, move the Mail folder currently in ~/Library/Keychains/ out of there (e.g. to the Desktop) and import the mailboxes you want to bring back into Mail by means of File > Import Mailboxes. If you cannot import them as Mail for Mac OS X because they’re too big, you may find useful the information provided in the thread I referred to in my reply to your first post.

Be careful the available disk space doesn’t become too low while you do this, i.e. don’t let it drop below say 2 GB, and try to bring it back to at least 4 GB after having fixed the problem.