Leopard upgrade and missing mail
 

In upgrading from 10.4 to 10.5 I neglected to run the Setup Assistant. When I started Mail, the mailboxes are there, but they are empty. I can find all the messages in the Library/Mail, but in the Mail program the option to Import Mailbozes is greyed out. How do I get access back to all my old messages?

try rebuilding the mailboxes (its in one of the menu's at the top)

"Rebuild mailboxes" is also grayed out. I have repaired permissions and that does nothing. I also note that the only way to Quit Mail is to Force Quit.

Have you moved Mail away from it's default location in /Applications?

Trevor

Mail remains in its default location/Applications

What messages appear in your logs when you try to run Mail? Or when you try to quit Mail? Or when Mail is running?

You can easily view your logs using the application named Console, which can be found in /Applications/Utilities. Log entries are time and date stamped, so you can know when those messages were added to the logs and match those times up to events, such as starting Mail.

Trevor

This is the last stack of entries in Console related to Mail:

1/7/09 3:52:14 PM Mail[131] *** Assertion failure in +[MessageRouter userJunkMailRule], /SourceCache/Message/Message-930.3/MessageStores.subproj/MessageRouter.m:1360
1/7/09 3:52:14 PM Mail[131] rules must already be loaded
Stack Trace: (
(
2431144203,
2464276027,
2431143659,
2497885860,
4153284,
3992030,
3978126,
3976876,
3976189,
2464262328,
2464256569,
2464323286,
3961768,
3961212,
3954642,
3941398,
3941054,
18441,
2496975406,
2430647077,
2430647512,
2499519168,
2499518681,
2499518285,
2488597885,
2488596016,
2488567403,
2488359076,
1029874
))

Do you have any InputManager plugins for Mail? Those will need to be removed, or else updated to versions compatible with OS X 10.5.

Trevor

No, everything is just what comes with the machines and OS. It is the Mail program itself that is messed up. If I copy one of the messages in the Libgrary file to another machine I can open it with that Mail program.

Perhaps you should first make a backup of everything for safety, then try reinstalling OS X Leopard, followed by an install of the Combo Update for 10.5.6.

Trevor

Is there a way to simply reinstall Mail?

Yes, you can do that using the Pacifist utility: http://www.charlessoft.com/

I hope that fixes it up for you, but I somehow am not convinced--there seems to be something more wrong with Mail then just what is in the Mail app package.

Trevor

It seems to be the Mail program alone that is the problem in that it cannot access the mailboxes. All permissions have been verified and repaired (and none of the repairs were to any Mail-related files. That's why I'm only suggesting reinstalling it. Would you suggest I use an Archive and Install and go back to 10.4 to see if Mail works fine again, then reinstall Leopard from scratch?

ACL problems again on the ~/Library/Mail directory?

what is ACL?

Stepping back a second.... If you have multiple e-mail accounts in Mail, you'll need to follow these steps for rebuilding a mailbox (this may be true if you only have one account, but I'm not certain).

1. Click the disclosure triangle to the left of Inbox (on the left side of Mail) so that the names of your accounts are visible.

2. Click an account name.

3. From the Mailbox menu, Rebuild should now be available.

Rebuild is available, but does nothing. Is it possible there is a plist file that needs deleting?

Victory!!! It just required removing the com.apple.mail.plist file

I'm in the same boat with mail missing after the upgrade and can't find the com.apple.mail.plist file to remove it. Can you tell me which directory it was in? Thanks!

Solution without deleting the com.apple.mail.plist
 

I ran into this problem, and found a way to get mail.app working again without completely deleting the com.apple.mail.plist (found in your home folder within Library/Preferences for the previous poster).

The console was showing a problem related to the junk mail rules, so I opened up the plist file in the Property List Editor.app (available free as part of Apple's XCode/developer download bundle). There were two entries whose name started with JunkMail, so I deleted those. I then looked at a clean new Leopard mail preferences file, and copied its junk mail settings. These were:

JunkMailBehavior - String - 1
junkMailTrustheaders - Boolean - Yes

You'll need to quit mail.app, make those changes to the plist file, and then run it again. In my case, that let me access all my accounts again and run perfectly. I really didn't want to recreate my multiple account settings again.

Your mileage may vary of course, but this worked like a charm for me. You could probably use the 'defaults' command line tool to do the same without the Property List Editor too.

I've tried both of the fixes, moving the plist and letting Mail rebuild it and then editing plist with the junk mail lines as above, and neither has worked for me.

It just hangs. I went off and left it for 4 hours, and it was still hung.

I did have huge amounts of mail in my boxes and folders. But still..... ?

Help!
tia,
lohroffc

The suggestion to edit the plist file using the Property List Editor.app to remove all of the JunkMail entries and to replace them with only the two listed in the prior post worked like a charm for me too! This is a far faster and easier change than any of the others I have seen posted on the various message boards.

Thank you PeteWarden for help with Mail Leopard Upgrade Problem
 

Your solution for the plist problem in mail was a life-saver. For the google record, for those with no programming skills but a lot of email accounts such as myself, the repair is simple. Just download the program Plist Pro and search for those Junkmail entries mentioned in this thread, and change the parameters accordingly. (You might consider paying the Plist Pro people something if you really benefit and don't end up buying the program after the trial.) Also, be sure to make a copy of the apple.com.mail.plist file before messing with it. For non-programmers, for the record, that means- just highlight the file, located in your user/library/preferences folder, and press apple-D. That will create a new file with the word "copy" in it. That way, if there's a problem with your handiwork, at least you'll have an original file to show your local apple-guru. Thanks again to Pete and this forum!

In my case, I simply removed the entry "JunkMailBehaviorHasBeenConfigured" from com.apple.mail.plist

Mail then created the other 2 entries mentioned.

I had success by removing "JunkMailBehaviorHasBeenConfigured" from com.apple.mail.plist

Everything working as normal, all emails and accounts came back and no probs quitting the app.

Thanks to those who went before me for your help! Especially strangervt.

Red

Thanks, worked like a charm! In fact I took it one step further, I didn't even have to delete the "JunkMailBehaviorHasBeenConfigured" entry, I just changed its boolean value from yes to no. Came right up, no problems.

You guys really saved my bacon, SO was NOT pleased that email didn't come up ;-)

Anybody submitted any kind of bug report to Apple?

Rob

Removed com.apple.mail.plist but old mail still missing
 

Deleting that little bugger did the trick to get new mail, but the hundred saved messages are nowhere to be found, except in the library. How do I get them back? Below is the last console, if that helps. :confused:

Mac OS X Version 10.4.11 (Build 8S2167)
2010-01-30 13:23:24 -0500
2010-01-30 13:23:24.926 SystemUIServer[85] lang is:en
TomTom HOME runner started.
CHOMERun::NotifyChanged
CHOMERun::NotifyChanged
Jan 30 13:23:26 elaine-lacourses-computer mDNSResponder: Adding browse domain local.
Jan 30 13:23:27 elaine-lacourses-computer ntpdate[112]: no servers can be used, exiting
mount_smbfs: spnego blob2principal error 1
CHOMERun::NotifyChanged
2010-01-30 13:25:58.605 Lexmark All In One Center[228] CFLog (0):
CFPropertyListCreateFromXMLData(): plist parse failed; the data is not proper UTF-8. The file name for this data could be:
(UNKNOWN)
The parser will retry as in 10.2, but the problem should be corrected in the plist.
Debugger() was called!
Jan 30 15:04:06 elaine-lacourses-computer authexec: executing /Volumes/Mac OS X Install DVD/Install Mac OS X.app/Contents/Resources/minibless
Jan 30 15:04:08 elaine-lacourses-computer authexec: executing /usr/sbin/nvram
TomTom HOME runner stopped.