Compaction Error in Mail etc.

Yesterday I started getting a compaction error from Mail when I tried to delete large portions of the Inbox. Although I could delete a few emails at a time and then quit. they were back after the next compaction. Today I tried to troubleshoot it, and I think I made it worse. Note: I was unaware of the "Rebuild" mailbox option.
I eventually found this forum discussion and it sounded like my problem, so I tried it:
With the Mail.app quit and using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail > this POP account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account).
Move the account named folder to the Desktop. The account named folder contains all mailboxes associated with the account such as the account's Inbox and Sent mailbox.
Launch Mail and a new account named folder will be created automatically by Mail within the Mail folder.
I tried Mail again, and now I somehow had lots of junk mail back which I'd long since deleted, in my old Inbox. I was also missing some emails, from Jan. 2, 2007 'til now. I "got new mail", and it's only from Feb. 5 2007 'til now (1 month on the server.)
The size of the old Inbox was 96.4 MB. After importing it, it's 87.2 MB. Would that account for the missing emails? If so, how do I get them back?
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 22 GB free on hard drive

Thanks for the response. Sorry that was so confusing.
I found the "instructions to import the old mailboxes from the original POP account named folder moved to the Desktop" in another thread, and I'll be darned if I can find that thread again today.
(This should be a bit more clear.)
I removed the PoP account to the Desktop, opened mail so it recreated the Inbox, and imported the contents of the original PoP folder into mail.
After importing, I had the imported Old Inbox containing deleted junk mail which somehow returned, and some emails were missing. I tried the same deletion of large blocks of mail that caused the error message in the original Inbox, only now it worked perfectly.
> I "got new mail", and it's only from Feb. 5
2007 'til now (1 month on the server.)
This is for/within the old Inbox mailbox that was
imported from the old account named folder moved to
the Desktop?
Nope, the new mail was in the original Inbox-mailbox, which was clear until I hit Shift-Command-N. The Old Inbox is in its own, newly-created-when-imported mailbox.
Pre-import Old Inbox contents:
content_index 3.7 MB
content_index-(null)-303 2.4 MB
content_index-localhost-257 2.6 MB
content_index-localhost-393 948 KB
Info.plist 4 KB
mbox 86.4 MB
tableofcontents 232 KB
iBook Mac OS X (10.3.9)

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"Compaction Error" in Mail

I continue to get a "compaction error" when I try to delete emails/move them to my junk. It says my mailbox is too full and yet I can't delete anything because it is too full! I've tried all sorts of combinations of deleting, etc. Help please!

Hirschee's message of 30 May (and others previously) describes the same problem I am experiencing. It seems to arise when the Inbox gets too full.
I solved it once before by freeing up space on the hard disk, but that has not worked this time. It is nightmarish not being able to delete.
I have a POP account.
Any advice gratefully received.
Ben.
iBook dual USB 500MHz G3 Mac OS X (10.2.x) (10.2.8)
replying to -
Hello, and welcome to the Discussions.
What type of account do you have -- POP, IMAP or
.mac?
If IMAP (or .mac) what are your selections in Mail
Preferences/Accounts/Special Mailboxes (assumes you
are running Panther as your Profile reports)? It
appears you may be leaving deleted messages in the
Inbox?
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Help! Mail Compaction Error - Lost Messages

I had too many e-mails in my inbox and was selectively deleting e-mails. I got a message about a "compaction" error, and when my e-mail restarted, I had gone from 5,000 messages to 75.
I need to keep many of the lost messages -- that's why I was selectively deleting them. This happened to me once before a year or two ago, and I know there's a way to get those messages back -- but I can't find my notes.
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Hello Emily.
The folder it created contained a folder called
"split_mailboxes" but nothing ever appeared in there.
What did appear were files called "Sent Messages-0001",
"Sent Messages-0002" etc...
I believe these files are the parts into which the script breaks the troublesome mbox file within the Sent Messages.mbox package. They are in the same mbox format, just named differently, and are to be imported into Mail using the Other data format option. I believe the script should do this automatically, but apparently it didn't for some reason.
In Mail, do File > Import Mailboxes, choose Other as the data format, and follow the instructions to import all these files. You'll have to select the folder that contains the files, rather than the files themselves, when telling Mail what to import.

More Lost Mail After Compacting Error

I've seen this problem in a few posts, but still have not been able to get back the missing email. While deleting a bunch of messages, I got the compaction error message, and when I restarted the email, almost all the messages were gone. I followed the steps to put the inbox on the desktop and import it back to mail, but due to its absurdly large size (1.49G, and yes, I imagine that's the root of all my problems) the mail crashed. I tried using mboxbreaker, but got "Error-48 already an item with that name" and "Error- 2753 the variable spec is not defined". Any help will be much appreciated; while the vast majority of the lost messages should have been deleted long ago, there are some important personal things amongst the sludge.

yeah, i just don't get it. the settings are exactly the same...i've made sure of that. connection doctor says everything is fine...and outmail mail works. but new mail just sits in my web based inbox, and mac mail never pulls it off...frustrating. out of all the problems i thought i might have when doing a fresh install, i didn't expect this one.
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I continue to have an issue with apple Mail. This started when I had too little hard drive free space. I have now upgraded and added an external hard drive with 2 partitions and have deleted a ton of stuff from my original 8.5gig hard drive to leave me with about 3gigs of free space. I began using Carbon Copy Cloner to back everything up on a weekly basis. Now my issue is that e-mails wont delete and mail will shut down occasionally. It will also give me "compaction errors" and revert the mailbox to original settings. I have tried all of Allan Sampsons suggestions, like going to Applications/Library/ etc. and moving the Inbox to my desktop. etc. etc. etc. ALL has not helped and is just seeming to compound the issue....things keep getting worse. Until just the last few days I was also having shut down issues and "sleep" issues. I ran disk utility and this seems to have been cleared up. I really believe that I have some corruption in my Mail program and would like to remove Mail and reinstall it fresh. Does anybody have any other suggestions? I think I can reinstall with no problem, but I'm unclear how to remove the old corrupted version of Mail. Could someone give me other suggestions or help me through the removal of the corrupted old Mail?

Hello Alana.
Deleting and re-installing the Mail.app rarely resolve this or any problem.
All Mail.app data is stored in the Mail folder at Home > Library > Mail and all email account information and general Mail.app settings are stored in the Mail.app preference file.
Since your hard drive did not have adequate free hard drive space required for OS X to function properly until recently, it sounds like some of your mailboxes (mbox files) have some corruption (not the application itself). If so, re-installing the Mail.app will not resolve this since no data is stored in the application.
Quit Mail first and using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail. Move the entire Mail folder to the external hard drive for later use.
Launch Mail and a new Mail folder and account named folders within will be created automatically. All mailboxes will be empty and any created rules and signatures will not be available along with Junk Mail "learned" settings lost but this will determine if the problem lies within the old Mail folder which I believe it does.
If this allows the Mail.app to function properly, you can use the Import Mailboxes function to import selected mailboxes from within the old Mail folder moved to the external hard drive and I would import only a number of available mailboxes at one time since one or a number of the existing mailboxes probably have some corruption due to the lack of free hard drive space you had previously.

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Error message: Compaction error

My mail program is not sending or receiving. Error message: "Compaction Error There was a failure while writing to the disc. The disc may be full. The mailbox will be returned to its state before compaction."

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Compaction error

I had found a good discussion on this, but the fix didn't suit my situation. Because it had been considered answered by the original poster, I could not post a reply. So here we are with a new one.
Now that disclaimer is done, a user has gotten this error message:
Compaction Error. There was a failure while writing to the disk. The disk maybe full. The mailbox will be restored to its state before compaction.
while trying to delete his email messages. The first thing I looked at was to view the file size of his inbox. It is a paltry 112Kb. Too small and there were only 3 messages in his inbox. I moved his mail folder to the top of his home directory and recreated his mail, however, any previous mails are missing. Here are the following steps taken to get to the point of missing email.
He opens Mail
He deletes message with big attachments
He gets the compaction error
He clicks OK
He closes Mail
He opens Mail
There is no more mail
The mail file size reduces dramatically.
Is it at all possible to get this person's mail back?

I would also like to mention that I have a copy of this Mail file on a CD so that I can still some how some way try to retrieve it. Most importantly, this is Panther and its Mail.
Finally, there is 18G available free space on this computer with the mail problem, so drive space is not an issue. Because this was not my computer and this user can't give me as detailed information as size of box or number of messages before the crash, this is the best I can provide for details. Thanks all.

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I desperatly need help. Everytime I open mail it is ok then it freezes when saving to disk - and error message "compaction error" cleared out folders still no luck. Please help!!!

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Compaction Error in Mail etc.

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