Comments on: Rebuilding the Apple Mail Envelope Index

By: chandrika

chandrika — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 04:21:26 +0000

I tried this and several other strategies. Story…

Setup account wanted to trash account/reset mail and found site to remove mail folder from library and com.apple.mail.plist from preferences. Did that and was able to resetup mail. However, the synch from my gmail account isn’t happening. I’ve tried this technique above and no luck…it won’t get the emails from gmail. I want to start from scratch…what do I do?

By: Jim Mitchell

Jim Mitchell — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:55:04 +0000

Thanks Darren. Sounds like some lingering issues with MobileMe. I feel for you man (and everyone else who's been dealing with MobileMe hell).

Since I don't use the service, this isn't a factor for me. However, if you do use MobileMe, and are having issues, the kb article above is a good point of reference.

By: Darren

Darren — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 04:35:22 +0000

Good point. Absolutely, I did. (Had to. It won’t talk to Envelope Index otherwise.) I made sure that Tester had Read & Write permissions on the copied files. And then went to the top of the folder (~/Library/Mail) and copied the permissions to subfolders (Apply to enclosed items) to boot.

Trick: this (below) kb article mentions an extra crucial step that solved the problem. After I replaced the original Envelope Index file to double check everything else was fine then pulled it again and a (Key step) MAC-XXXXXX folder from a MobileMe account, THEN let Mail rebuild the index (took 3 times as long, nearly 40 seconds) file and it was fine. And correct.

So I made another copy of my real Mail folder and tried the simpler Mail menu Mailbox:Rebuild on the problem (Sent had ghosts that wouldn’t delete, just get greyer) and that worked on that one folder.

All better now. So now I get to fix Address Book not syncing with MobileMe only on this account.

Apple Kb Article: http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1907

By: Jim Mitchell

Jim Mitchell — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:54:52 +0000

Hmmm – your mail folder (from one account) used in a “Tester” (different) user account. Did you take the time to make sure permissions on the directory and contents were set to the Tester user first?

By: Darren

Darren — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 03:31:42 +0000

Failed miserably in 10.5.4 under Mail 3.4 on a test copy of my Mail folder on a Tester user account. It rebuilt the Envelope Index but with no information in it. All 7318 messages are unread, have no titles, and were received at the time of rebuild. Not to mention that there are no message contents to be seen when selecting one. All the .emlx files are there but none show any contents when opened directly (double click the file) into Mail.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:17:09 +0000

thanks – worked perfectly!

By: grumpf

grumpf — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:33:05 +0000

Great. This worked just perfectly. Thx

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:21:25 +0000

Worked for me too. Thanks a million!

By: graafisk

graafisk — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:54:08 +0000

I needed this. I did it. It worked perfectly. Thank you!!!! Good, clear & concise instructions. I’m a happy Mac again.