Cannot view SENT messages

Question

Had this problem 2 yrs. ago and can't remenber what I did to resolve it. I can see who I sent e-mail messages to, but the message itself does appear any longer. Instead I get this:
"The message from Ben Shari <[email protected]> concerning “<Unknown subject>” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it".
Anyone know what it means? I have a feeling it has to do with removing messages from the server which I have done (I think) in Mail Preferences but the support folks at Cogeco, my service provider couldn't be of much use when it comes to MACs
Any ideas please?

Answer 1

You’re welcome.
is there a way to save all messages in another folder before doing a rebuild?
If you’re referring to the messages that don’t show up properly, no. You must fix the problem first, then move the messages wherever you want. Actually, it looks like you’ve kept storing sent messages in that mailbox without having completely fixed the problem first, which is a really bad idea, as it can only make it more difficult to recover the missing messages.
Assuming this is a POP account, proceed as follows:
1. Quit Mail.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/.
3. Locate Sent Messages.mbox and move it to the Desktop.
4. Although Sent Messages.mbox appears as a file, it’s actually a special kind of folder (a package) that contains several files. Ctrl-Click on Sent Messages.mbox and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu that appears. Report the size of the mbox file contained in the mailbox package. Depending on the size of this file, Mail may or may not be able to import it in step 6.
5. Open Mail. A new empty Sent Messages.mbox will automatically be created within the account folder, and this will let you continue using Mail normally.
6. Do File > Import Mailboxes and follow the instructions to import the Sent Messages.mbox that’s on the Desktop. I’m not sure what the import options available in Mail 1.3 are, but you should choose Other / Standard mbox or something like that, so that Mail looks at the mbox file only (and Incomning_Mail, if present) and ignores the other files in the package.
If Mail doesn’t let you select Sent Messages.mbox in step 5 because it’s a package instead of a plain folder, rename Sent Messages.mbox to just Sent Messages (i.e. remove the .mbox suffix) so that it becomes a normal folder, and try again.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder, i.e. ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder.