Messages disappearing from Mail

[shumster]

backed up my data before the weekend, reinstalled (clean install) OS X, and restored the data.

Now I am getting the occasional message in Mail sayin something along the lines that "the current mailbox could not be compacted (possibly due to lack of disk space) and that it would now attempt a recovery from teh previous data", or something along those lines.


I have multiple mailboxes, and the one affected appears to be my Yahoo mailbox. Messages that I intended to reply to have just disappeared. Can't find them anywhere!

I also experienced partially downloaded messages from teh same Yahoo account. Saw the header, but after clicking on it, get a message saying something like "the message was not fully downloaded. Change teh status of teh mail box to online and try again". Problem is: the mailbox was online, and even after quitting and restarting mail, the messages were not downloaded. Logged into Yahoo Mail on Safari, checked the messages as unread and tried again - still no luck. Eventually had to forward them to my .mac account.

Biggest problem though, and theone I really need to some advice on is the first one outlined above. Thanks all. Had some important messages disappear on me.

 

[shumster]

some more info

I also checked Mail help and rebuilt the mail box as suggested, and repaired permissions on the disk.

The compacting problem has not reappeared yet, but I still haven't found the lost messages.

 

[shumster]

Further info

Got this message this morning, after opening up Mail.

 

[jsw]

Corrupt file? I'd quit Mail and - if you haven't already - make a backup copy of the Yahoo-related folder(s) within ~/Library/Mail. "whatever.mbox" files, by the way, can be examined by right/control clicking on them to Show Package Contents, then double-clicking on the contained mbox file to open it in TextEdit.

 

[shumster]

What should I do after backing up (making a copy of the mailbox I presume)? Delete the current one and then move the copy backinto the directory?

 

[jsw]

The first thing I'd do is go to ~/Library/Mail and make an archive of it - right/control click on the whole Mail folder and make an archive. This'll take a while if you have a ton of Mail, but it'll preserve things as they are in case something goes horribly wrong.

Next, I'd do what I described above to open the pesky Yahoo mbox package to see if you can look inside the 'mbox' file contained therein and see if you can find a trace of your lost emails. If they aren't in there, they are gone. If you've backed up Mail in the recent past, I'd get those backups back out. If not, the mail is gone.

Is your lost mail findable in the 'mbox' file within the xxx.mbox Yahoo file?

I'm at work now - Win2K - so I can't tell you more steps beyond this. Hopefully, others can. If not, I'll look into this thread when I get home.

From now on, though, back up your Mail folder and keep multiple backup copies - it'll make things easier in the future.