Getting rid of obsolete Panther mail files in Tiger

I found this on a blog the other day and couldn't remember seeing it posted here but for those with large mailboxes and who transferred them from Panther, this might be useful

Apparently, when Tiger's Mail updates your Panther mailbox and converts from your mail mbox to elmx files, it doesn't do anything with your old Panther mail messages. They don't get deleted but nor do they serve any purpose any longer.

I ran the scripts yesterday (after making a backup) and got nearly a GB of space back so I figured it might prove useful to others too. Instructions are on the blog link above but just in case it vanishes - they're quoted below.

jpb's blog said:

Here's a list of commands to clear out the Panther grime. Make sure you have a backup of ~/Library/Mail, of course. Each line starting with find should be a separate command in a Terminal window.

find ~/Library/Mail -path "*.imapmbox/Cached*" -exec rm -v '{}' ';'
find ~/Library/Mail -path "*.mbox/mbox" -exec rm -frv '{}' ';'
find ~/Library/Mail -path "*.*mbox/content_index" -exec rm -frv '{}' ';'
find ~/Library/Mail -path "*.mbox/table_of_contents" -exec rm -frv '{}' ';'

Click to expand...