How Can I 'START OVER' in Mail?

Question

Hello,
Is it possible to star over with a spanking new mail application? I had used Mail previously and had configured accounts and several mailboxes. I then left it as is and switched to Entourage.
Now want to switch back but since the last time, things have changed. When I open mail it shows the mailboxes from before.
Do I simply delete each one? but does that leave something behind somewhere?
I guessed best is to go to users/library/mail and delete the mailboxes there?
I simply want to 'start over' with a new mail app.

Answer 1

Hello Meherally.
Mail stores most preferences and all account settings in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist (except the passwords, which are stored in the keychain). Everything else, including all your messages and mailboxes, is stored in ~/Library/Mail. You may set up Mail again from scratch by trashing both, or just renaming them or moving them out of there (quit Mail first if it’s running).
You may also want to trash the Mail cache (~/Library/Caches/Mail) and the folder where Mail saves by default a temporary copy of attachments opened directly from Mail (~/Library/Mail Downloads).
Don’t trash anything stored out of your home folder, though. In particular, don’t confuse /Library/ with ~/Library/, i.e. DON’T trash /Library/Mail by mistake.
Finally, if you don’t have a .Mac account, but did set up one at some point in the past, you may also want to get rid of the corresponding .Mac account settings in System Preferences > .Mac. Otherwise, Mail will try to automatically set up that mail account for you again.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.