Mail Drafts missing, inbox duplicates

[GFLPraxis]

Here's the situation; on my mom's MacBook Pro, all the Drafts and Sent Mail folders are suddenly empty. She can save new things in them, but everything else is gone. Apparently she saved lots of notes in drafts and everything is missing.

Additionally, one of her POP inboxes is delivering messages twice and always showing them new, even after she views them. The duplicates have the same title but the bodies say:
"The message from no-reply@*****.com concerning “******” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."

Her signatures are missing as well. There is one .Mac account and three POP accounts; no IMAP accounts, unless that's what .Mac uses. Has anyone encountered this before, or has any troubleshooting ideas? Thanks.

 

[GFLPraxis]

I've found in /Library/Mail/Mail/Signatures/ a bunch of .webarchive files with long alphanumeric names (just random letters and numbers). When I double-click on them, they open in Safari and show the old signatures. But they don't show up in Mail.

There is a SignaturesByAccount.plist file. When I open this file, I find in the Signatures drop-down-box alphanumeric characters that correspond to those files (without the .webarchive bit on the end).

 

[ivi7]

"The message from no-reply@*****.com concerning “******” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."

Her signatures are missing as well. Thanks.

I have had this problem at work. I don't really know what causes it.
This is what I do from Library I delete my MAIL folder and then set up the mail inboxes again. This eliminates the problem.

 

[GFLPraxis]

I have had this problem at work. I don't really know what causes it.
This is what I do from Library I delete my MAIL folder and then set up the mail inboxes again. This eliminates the problem.

Unfortunately it seems that Mail deletes items off POP servers after a week, so I need to recover the old Mail folders or else they're gone.

 

[GFLPraxis]

Alright so apparently Mail had thrown it's entire Mail directory into /Library/Mail/Mail/ and created a new Mail directory, essentially starting over. It must have thought the old one was corrupted and backed it up.

I moved /Library/Mail/Mail to ~/Library/Mail/, and everything is back.

Cool.