Error Saving Mail Preferences

I'm trying to set up Mail in 10.7.2 and whenever I try to change something in Preferences I get 'Error Saving Preferences' pop-up. It says 'Writing your preferences to disk has failed. Your preferences may not have been saved. The permissions on ~/Library/Preferences may be wrong or your disk may be full.' The disk is definitely not full and I have Read & Write privs on my Library/Preferences folder. What gives?

Sometimes, these files in transfer or upgrade get corrupted. No ryme or reason, happens sometimes. You can trash the old .pilst files. Repeat this porcedure for your other Apps with sticky Preferences. You can read here about .plist files. Research CNET fo additonal articles on .Plists
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-10439251-263.html

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Error message says error writing Mail preferences

There’s a discussion about the very same problem I’m having at <http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2047886&#2047886> about Mail not being able to save preferences... or at least a message pops up each time despite the fact that the preferences are saved. Annoying, really. I’ve followed all the steps suggested in the above thread, including terminal commands and repairing of permissions. However, the problem didn’t go away. Unfortunately, the thread above was closed (without being answered), so I had to open a new post. Here’s a description of the problem as stated in the above thread... and the problem occurs exactly like that on my Powerbook running 10.4.7.
**** Original question follows ***
At some point in time, I suddenly began having the problem of every time I close my Mail preferences window, I get an error message stating, "Error Saving Preferences - Writing your preferences to disk has failed. Your preferences may not have been saved. The permissions on ~/Library/Preferences may be wrong or your disk may be full."
My hard disk has many GB free, and I still keep getting the error message after repairing permissions.
I ran a test of changing a couple of prefs, then quitting Mail and relaunching, and my changes stuck.
But some prefs such as changes to signatures won't stick (although they never did, so the latter may be unrelated to my current problem).
In any event, it's disconcerting that I keep getting the error message.
Anyone know what's up? Is there a fix?

The preference file may be corrupt.
Try the following:
Quit the Mail.app first and using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail. Copy the Mail folder and place the copy on the Desktop for backup purposes.
Using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Preferences > com.apple.mail.plist. Move the com.apple.mail.plist file to the Desktop.
Note: Moving the com.apple.mail.plist file out of the Preferences folder will require re-entering all email account information when re-launching Mail.
The only exception to this is if you have a .Mac account and/or you created an email account as part of the original computer setup assistant used when first turning on the computer after it was purchased which will be re-created automatically.
Launch Mail and decline the prompt to import mailboxes. After re-entering all email account information, the Mail.app should rediscover the existing account named folders and mailbox files at Home > Library > Mail.
After confirming all mailboxes were successfully rediscovered, you can delete the copy of the Mail folder and old com.apple.mail.plist file from the Desktop.
Test if this resolves the problem.
My hard disk has many GB free, and I still keep getting the error
message after repairing permissions.
What is your hard drive capacity and available free space?

Error on saving Mail preferences

Dear all,
When I start Apple Mail and I change and want to save something in Preferences an error message comes up saying something like this (translation from Dutch):
Error on saving preferences
Your preferences cannot be written to disk and will probably not be saved. Check your access rights for ~ / Library / Preferences and if there is enough space on the disk.
Well there is enough space on the disk but I do not know what access rights are needed.
In Finder (Get info) I find the following information on sharing and access rights:
System          Read and write
Wheel            Read only
Everyone       Read only
At this I use Postbox as my default mail client.
When I want to change my mail client to Apple Mail I cannot change this in the pref's of Postbox nor in Apple Mail.
Is there anybody who knows what to do?
Thanks in advance.
Regards,
Stef

Select the icon of your home folder in the sidebar of a Finder window. Open the Info window and click the lock icon to authenticate. In the Sharing & Permissions section, you (not System) should have read & write access. If not, make it so. Select "Apply to enclosed items" from the action (gear icon) menu.

Mail - Error saving Preferences Msg

I am unable to reset my junk mail filter. In Mail preferences I select RESET and this message pops up:
Error Saving Preferences
Writing your preferences to disk has failed. Your preferences may not have been saved. The permissions on -/Library/preferences may be wrong or your disk may be full.
After getting this message, I used disk utility to repair permissions ( I did it twice and it appears that the same permission repairs occur each time I use repair permissions) I also tried to repair disk permissions usind Disk Warrior - with similar results.) In addition, the disk is far from being full.
Can anyone shed some
TIA

Amount of free space on my computer:
Capacity: 499.76GB
Available 432.54GB
You are doing great on free space.
I tried to "repair disk partitions" but this didnt work, and everywhere I looked on the web it would say that this does not work.
It does work, but not for permissions issues on individual user files. It only has benefit on systemwide issues.
I also did a complete TimeMachine restore. This didnt work.
This is really only affective if you restore from a point in time when the issue did not occur which can be tough to know unless you try adding new Mail accounts every day.
_Go to Your User > Library > Preferences.
_Click on the Preferences folder once to highlight it.
_Go to File > Get Info
_Make sure that your user name is listed in the Sharing & Permissions window with Read & Write access
_Go to the bottom of the info window and click on the pad lock to unlock it
_Click on the cog / gear and then click on apply to enclosed items
_Now try adding an account in Mail again.
If the issue persists at this point it may be necessary to reset Mail which may require you to re-enter your account settings.
Remove Your User > Preferences > com.apple.mail.plist to the desktop and then open Mail and try adding an account.
Cheers.

Error Saving Preferences on exiting Mail Preferences

Hi, I am getting the Error Saving Preferences error on exiting Mail Preferences with advice to check disk space and directory permissions on ~/Library/Preferences. Not knowing what the official permissions should be I booted the iMac from the Leopard installation disk and in Disk Utility I repaired file permissions but this did not make any difference. I have followed other instructions I found in Apple Discussions which were for a previous OSX where I backed up the Mail directory and then moved ~/System/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist to the Desktop. Per instructions I then fired up Mail which picked up my Mac account straight away but again on exiting Preferences without even adding any new mailboxes the same error cropped up... in fact I don't think a new plist was created. I returned the old plist and Mail directory.
It may be worth mentioning that just before this problem cropped up I had been trouble-shooting another problem where every minute my active window would lose focus, I tracked this down to HP_scheduler (I have an HP all-in-one printer, C6180) and on killing the process the problem went away, but I think it was also a symptom of the real cause which is still unknown as the printer software has been installed for about a year, last update was months ago... but before I had tracked the issue down to this I had use MacScan2 to flush just my Safari caches and temporary files etc, it was running in authenticated mode, may mean something, may not. Subsequently to discovering HP Scheduler was to blame I uninstalled all the printer software using the HP uninstall package.
Around this time a third problem transpired where settings were not being retained in various System Preferences. Unfortunately I didn't pick up on it straight away as being a third problem and now can't remember whether it started before the window lost focus problem or not. The first time it happened was when I tried to put MacScan2 into the startup list for my login, it could be added but on checking the addition it wasn't retained in the list and well I thought nothing more of it as it was the first time I had tried to do such a thing. Then I noticed the Mail issue just by chance and subsequently, through seeing someone else's problems logged back in 2006 I think, I noticed that although I could change screensaver I could not make a change in desktop photo stick.
I have since reinstalled the printer software and I am no longer losing focus from the active window.
However, I think it is probably the case that the Mail Preferences, Startup Items and Desktop Preferences issues are all the symptoms of one and the same problem and I would be very grateful if anyone is familiar with and/or knows of a solution to this issue.
Many thanks for reading!

Well, in the end I tried many things including lots of things that I thought wouldn't help such as cleaning out caches, running crons; I was using IceClean and pretty much tried every system maintenance option but to no avail. I have removed MacScan and have kept Norton, which this time found a few things in my .wine folder, but I have only performed a few full system scans as it takes a full day.
This resulted in the knowledge that I would have to do a Leopard reinstall if that failed then a complete restore from TimeMachine which I knew would take ages, but fortunately the reinstall worked perfectly and effortlessly to solve the problem, and it only took 30 mins to update the security patches including 2 automatic restarts.
Phew!

Error message when changing Mail preferences

Whenever I change anything in the Preferences of Mail 2.0.8 even just opening the preferences and then closing them, I get an error message that says "Error Saving Preferences" " Writing your preferences to disk has failed. Your preferences may not have been saved. The permissions on ~/Library/Preferences may be wrong or your disk may be full." However, the change seems to have been made anyway as the expected new behavior occurs. The disk isn't full (haven't had it long enough!) and I don't know what to do about the preferences.
Is there anything I can do to find out what might be wrong BEFORE something horrible happens? Tomorrow is back up day. Should I change anything before I do it?
10.4.6
Mac Mini Intel Core Duo Mac OS X (10.4.6) 1 gig RAM

This particular issue is still a mystery to me. In the rare cases when I've seen it reported, none of the suggestions that one would expect should work did.
Open /Applications/Utilities/Terminal and type the following commands -- you can copy them here, one at a time, and paste them in Terminal to avoid having to manually type them:
ls -ld ~/Library/Preferences
ls -l ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
What do they say?
If you want to try re-creating the preferences file, be sure to do it properly, i.e.:
1. Quit Mail.
2. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something goes wrong. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is stored.
3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate the com.apple.mail.plist file and move it to the Desktop (to be deleted if this fixes the problem).
You'll have to set up your non-Mac accounts from scratch all over again. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don't. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in ~/Library/Mail/ when done.
You'll also have to re-configure most of your settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it's enabled.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the file path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the file path there.

Error Message: Mail could not be saved

Just transferred all files from old G4 to new Intel Mac Mini. Mail receives and sends mail without a hitch. However, as I compose messages, I now get a drop down panel that says: Error: The message could not be saved. There are no messages in either the Sent or Draft folders.
My ISP is AOL. Sent messages are stored there, although in Preferences the option to store Drafts or Sent Messages is not checked.
Ron Maier

I don’t know what’s going on here. I’d set up Mail again from scratch, check that things work fine, then import your mail back afterwards as follows:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/. Move (not copy) the entire Mail folder out of there, to the Desktop.
3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate com.apple.mail.plist and move it to the Desktop.
4. Open Mail and set it up again from scratch. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don’t. Just enter the account information and check that everything works fine. Be sure to turn OFF Store messages on the server for all the mailboxes and all the AOL accounts in Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors.
5. You’ll have to re-configure all your settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it’s enabled.
6. If Mail works fine now and you had any messages stored in local mailboxes, do File > Import Mailboxes, choose Mail for Mac OS X as the data format, and follow the instructions to import your mail from the old Mail folder that’s now on the Desktop.
Given how ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/ is organized in your case, I suggest moving the “On My Mac” folder out of there (e.g. to the Desktop), then separately import the resulting “Mailboxes” and “On My Mac” folders.
If all is well and you don’t miss anything, the files on the Desktop can be deleted, although you may want to keep them for a while, just in case.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the folder path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the folder path there.

An error occurred while updating mail preferences

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hi jay,
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Mail error "Verify that you have addressed this message correctly. Check your SMTP server settings in Mail preferences and verify any advanced settings with your system administrator.Select a different outgoing mail server from the list"

The Mail application has suddenly started giving error:
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It was working fine till yesterday, suddenly it stopped. I have 3 email accounts configured here, 2 are on exchange servers and one yahoo. Connection verification works and shows all servers as green.
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I had 3 accounts, 2 ms exchange accounts and 1 yahoo. After removal of yahoo, everything is back to normal.
Regards
Rohit

Intermittent error saving attachments from mail: "Names longer than 31 characters are not supported on the destination volume."

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I am seeing this too.
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Error when saving calendar exports-names longer than 31 characters not supported on the destination volume.
Very spooky. Not always reproducible, but it happened to me while using Office365-Outlook web-based email (saving a PDF).
RE: the suggestion, checking security box "allow apps downloaded from all sites" I would really rather not do that.
On my system it is set to allow "Mac App store and identified developers."
Oh sorry, I'm on Yosemite, I see this is Mav forum...

Error occurred when saving user preferences

Hi,
we Copy catalog and RPD to production Environment. when i am try to change the my account(Weblogic) setting getting bellow error.
Exception occurred when saving user preferences to the catalog access denied for user to path /users/weblogic/_prefs/userprefsxmlstore.
I need to change any catalog permission? in Dev it is working fine.
Thx,

1 Open the online web catalog in offline mode.
2. Navigate to /users/weblogic/_prefs/ folder,Right click and select permissions.
3. From the drop-down list select users and click on the List button.
4. Now, you can see all the users with access to this folder.
5. Grant your user FULL CONTROL on this folder and apply recursively to all files under this folder (click on Apply Recursively check box).
6. Restart The OBIEE Presentation Server.
ref: http://www.cool-bi.com/Issues/CatalogPermissions.php
If helps mark as correct
Edited by: Srini VEERAVALLI on Apr 10, 2013 9:31 AM

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Any tips on setting up a NEW account with advanced settings?
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Well, the one set up on exchange 2k3 is now working fine, although no changes were made on either the iPhone or the exchange side, so that's fun, but it still is throwing errors when connecting to the other 2 exchange accounts. The common elements are that both non-functioning exchange accounts are google apps for business accounts. So is one of the ones that's working, by the way. The settings on both accounts are the same as the one that's working, and both worked fine before the 8.3 upgrade. I have no issue accessing both of these accounts on my ipad which is currently on 8.2.x. If it's not the iphone OS at fault, I'm at a loss as to what it could be.

Mail Preferences Disappeared

Mail was working just fine all day. My wife tries to reply to a message received earlier and gets the following error message:
"This message could not be delivered and will remain in your Outbox until it can be delivered.
Verify that you have addressed this message correctly. Check your SMTP server settings in Mail Preferences and verify any advanced settings with your system administrator."
I go to Mail->Preferences and the only Preference pane I get is for Junk Mail. General, Accounts, Fonts and Colors, Viewing, Composing, Signatures, Rules are all missing. Can't very well verify the SMTP server settings if the Preference pane isn't there.
My Inbox looks OK and I have received one message since this all started. I can read the contents and was able to empty the Junk Mail and Deleted Messages mailboxes. File sizes in Users->xxx->Library->Mail all are the right size and appear intact.
I've tried a reboot and a complete system shutdown (including power disconnect), but Mail Preferences are still missing. There's nothing in the Trash that looks fishy. I've tried a couple of test messages back to my own e-mail account and got the same error message.
Is there a way to reinstall only the Mail app? Is there some way to find/verify that the Mail Preferences exist?
Need help, here. This is weird-and-a-half. First time in 20 years on Mac that I've seen anything like this.
Dual 2 Ghz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)
Dual 2 Ghz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

OK, I found the answer in a reply to another question. The pill-shaped buton in the upper right corner of the Junk Mail Preference pane retrieved the rest of the Preferences and I was able to check my SMTP Server settings, which were correct. My test messages also came through this morning, leading me to believe that my ISP had a problem on their end, which was subesequently corrected.
My habit has always been to close any Preferences window while in the "Show All" mode, so I didn't think to check that first.
Dual 2 Ghz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Certificate Error in Mail with Gmail

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So long as you use POP access and set Mail not to remove messages from the server under any circumstance. To do this open Mail > Preferences > Accounts and with the GMail account selected click on Advanced and UNcheck "Remove copy from server after retrieving a message".

Error Saving Mail Preferences

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