Phantom Mailbox

[jasnw]

This complaint from Mail (log entry below) has been showing up in my system log for many months now. No apparent bad side effects, but I have no clue as to what the problem is and how to fix it. I think the ‘To Chris Xxxx.mbox’ mailbox directory is one that I had on my desktop many months ago to import a bunch of mail from another system. I’ve tried manually creating /Users/jim/Desktop/chrisMail/To Chris Xxxx.mbox, but that has no effect. There is no such mailbox in my Mail mailboxes, nor has there ever been other than during the import process. How do I stop this?

8/27/14 3:38:03.812 PM Mail[1241]: *** Assertion failure in -[MFLocalAccount mailboxForRelativePath:isFilesystemPath:create:], /SourceCache/Mail/Mail-1878.6/FrameworkTargets/MailFramework/Accounts/MFMailAccount.m:4296
Absolute path passed into -[MFLocalAccount mailboxForRelativePath:isFilesystemPath:create:]: /Users/jim/Desktop/chrisMail/To Chris Xxxx.mbox
(
0 MailCore 0x00007fff8d9f08bc -[MCAssertionHandler _handleFailureWithPreamble:description:arguments:] + 141
1 MailCore 0x00007fff8d9f072d -[MCAssertionHandler handleFailureInMethodbject:file:lineNumber:description:] + 215
2 Mail 0x00007fff90a63045 -[MFMailAccount mailboxForRelativePath:isFilesystemPath:create:] + 204
3 Mail 0x00007fff90a642df +[MFMailAccount mailboxForURL:forceCreation:syncableURL:] + 435
4 Mail 0x00007fff90a761b3 __43+[MFMailbox queueUpdateCountsForMailboxes:]_block_invoke841 + 48
5 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff915756df __65-[__NSDictionaryM enumerateKeysAndObjectsWithOptions:usingBlock:]_block_invoke + 111
6 CoreFoundation 0x00007fff915755ee -[__NSDictionaryM enumerateKeysAndObjectsWithOptions:usingBlock:] + 222
7 Mail 0x00007fff90a760a0 __43+[MFMailbox queueUpdateCountsForMailboxes:]_block_invoke + 270
8 Foundation 0x00007fff9032a0b5 -[NSBlockOperation main] + 75
9 Foundation 0x00007fff903098a1 -[__NSOperationInternal _start:] + 631
10 Foundation 0x00007fff9030954b __NSOQSchedule_f + 64
11 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff91ffa28d _dispatch_client_callout + 8
12 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff91ffe7e3 _dispatch_async_redirect_invoke + 154
13 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff91ffa28d _dispatch_client_callout + 8
14 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff91ffc082 _dispatch_root_queue_drain + 326
15 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff91ffd177 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 40
16 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff95563ef8 _pthread_wqthread + 314
17 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff95566fb9 start_wqthread + 13
)

 

[jasnw]

The answer is to blow away (or move elsewhere) three files in ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData (files that begin with 'Envelope Index') which forces Mail to rebuild all of its internal indexing. As always, the trick is to google using the right search terms ('os x mail rebuild' in this case).