Mail.app downloading old messages again

I have multiple pop accounts. I have it set not to delete from the server for 30 days. In order sync my Macbook and Powerbook, I copied all my mail on my desktop to my Macbook. Everything is there and it works fine but when I check mail it tries to download 3000+ messages.
Basically all the same mail that is there already, from the last 30 days.
Mail.app thinks it has not downloaded it yet. Is there a way to tell it that it has downloaded it ?
Otherwise I am going to make a rule to download all that mail into a new folder then I can just delete it from there afterwards.

Hello, I'd try this...
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions...
Open Mail, highlight the problem Mailbox, choose Rebuild from Mail's Mailbox menu.

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Apple mail downloading old messages again

This happens to me every once in two/three months and is annoying like **** but have never been able to find situation. Here is what happens, i have 4 emails configured on my apple mail and they work just fine. I have settings where it leaves the copy of email at the server.
Now, after every few weeks it starts downloading some old emails automatically and it doesn't download all emails.. It just pick and chooses. For example, friday i had 50 unread emails and saturday evening i had 285. When i started checking my email, these are mostly old emails that i have already read but they are on server.
The oldest i got is from 12/17/2012 today is 3/17/2013 So its last 4 months but i also know its not downloading all emails in this time because then it would be like 10000 unread emails.
I can delete the ones i got again and kinda fix it temporarily but this will happen for sure again in couple of months. Any solid way to fix it forever? I care now because i only have 1 GB Storage left... lol, i know its lazy
Thanks a ton in advance.

Hello, I'd try this...
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions...
Open Mail, highlight the problem Mailbox, choose Rebuild from Mail's Mailbox menu.

Reg iPhone Mail App (downloading of emails)

Hi,
Does iPhone download the entire email when we check for emails?
Scenario:
- Open iPhone mail app
- receive 10 emails
- open the email to read the contents
- get ‘loading’ icon..seems as if that’s when it’s trying to get the email
- the contents received in few seconds depending on the email
- move on to next email…and see the same loading icon
Is it that mail app downloads just the headers and the content is downloaded when you actually open that particular email? Ideally, I would like the email to be downloaded completely to my phone…this way I can quickly check my emails and move across the messages.
I believe Blackberry works differently where the entire email is downloaded and only attachment is downloaded when you try to access it.
Thanks,

I have just received the new iphone 4th generation. I have a data plane for 200mb per month.
My question is wether iphone downloads the whole email message or if it downloads only the headers? If it downloads the whole message, can I opt for only the headers?
It seems from the first day of use it downloads all messages including the attachments and thus my data usage is huge. In my old Nokia phone only when I required to read the email it will go ahead to download the whole message-is this possible with iphone?
Marios.

Mail is sending old messages automatically.

Mail is sending old messages automatically. It's been doing this for about six months.
It only happens when open mail.
How can i stop this. I'm running tiger and have performed all the available software updates.
Thanks

First I'd backup your whole Mail folder.
Try trashing this file first, then logout/in...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
If that doesn't work try the .plists in...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/

How can I stop the mail app from downloading old messages and marking them as new.... repetedly

I have just bought myself my first ever mac, and i've been having a little trouble with the mail function that comes with it. The first time i connected my mail app to my hotmail adress, all my old mails started coming in and they were all marked as unread. i had like 7000 og them, so it took a while for them all to load. after this i marked them all as read, and it was fine for a couple of days.
I am not sure what makes all my e-mails load as "new" again and again, but it happens every so often. This is very annoying because i get a little notification at the top of my screen for every "new" e-mail.
In the beginning i didn't think that much of it, but now it is really starting to annoy me, bacause it has happened so many times, so my question is:
Have any of you experienced this? And how did you fix it?
And i am running the OS X version 10.8.2, if that is relevant

Is it an IMAP or POP account?
For POP accounts, you can select remove from server under the advanced tab of the account.
Apple support article with information on receiving a message more than once:
Mail Problems

Mail.app and Netscape Messaging Server v3.6

We are trying to track down performance issues with Mail.app in both Tiger and Panther. Issues include how long it takes to download large attachments (PDFs upwards of 10MB), how long it takes to synchronize and cache, and other things that appear in Mail's activity window and never go away. Downloading large attachments puts a large CPU load on our mail server. We are looking at all variables -- switches, network configs, local client settings, etc. We are on a switched network with a mix of Gig and 100BT to the desktops. But my question here is: What might be the advantage of upgrading to a newer mail server? Our Netscape 3.6 software is very old, but the Sun hardware it lives on had a CPU upgrade last year. Even though the IMAP protocol itself has been pretty stable for years, would we find newer platforms more efficient with modern needs such as large attachments and inboxes that receive dozens of messages a day?

Wow, this is dusting off the cobwebs. NS 3.X has a different format for mail message, the IMAP data is contained in the first 400 bytes (or so) of the message file. So sending them through the deliver program is not an option, unless you strip the bytes off.
When you ran upgrade on an individual user, did you first remove the 4.15 mailbox with mboxutil -d?

Mail app has gone cuckoo again

My mail has stopped downloading from my ISP either by wifi or 3G. There is no issue with the ISP. When I try to download it connects checks and then immediately returns me to the home screen. When I try to delete emails it does so, takes me out of the app and when I return the emails are back. This happens when I try to also delete the trash folder emails.
This has happened before so I had to take it back to factory setting and start all over again. Don't want to do this again
This happened pre 3.1.3 so I updated no change though
Any help appreciated

I had a similar problem this morning.
The current setup has the phone syncing two IMAP mail accounts and calendar/contacts automagically with Google.
If I launched the iPhone mail app, it would briefly show, vibrate, then crash back to the main screen. This would repeat each time launching mail, and even after hard reset.
Going to the macbook pro and using the mail app to look at the mail accounts, there was one email message that did not display a body, suggesting a malformed mail.
Deleting this one mail via the laptop seems to have enabled my iPhone mail app to access that account again without crashing.
I would suggest to others having a similar issue to first consider finding and delete similar offending mails via other mail programs on their desktop/laptop.

Mail.app downloads IMAP data repeatedly

I user mail.app on three different computers. My main desktop is an iMac. My main travel computer is a MBP. Both of these systems are running SL 10.6.5 (actually 10.6.6 as of today). Mail.app is configured to access my work email via exchange, and my personal email through IMAP. For archiving purposes I use mail-act-on to archive my read email from exchange to IMAP (not sure this matters, but throwing it out there). The problem is that if I happen to leave mail.app running on one computer while using mail.app on the other, they both get confused and re-download all of my archived IMAP email.
I have 23GB of email on my IMAP server. Over time, I've had the local copy of my email on both computers grow to over >160GB. The crazy thing is that, although the mail has been downloaded multiple times, the messages only appear once mail.app. I have to fix this by deleting the IMAP account, recreating is and re-downloading all of my email. As long as I don't forget to shut down mail.app on the inactive computer, I don't have this problem. However, any time I accidentally leave it running on multiple's the problem re-appears. This behavior has been seen by a friend of mine that uses mail.app in a similar fashion.
Has anyone seen this? Any way to fix this?

Looking into the Diagnostics and Usage Reports in 'Settings' -> 'General' -> 'About' I see nine different "ExcResource_MobileMail_DATE" reports. Looking at the report I see a SysInfoCrashReport that indicates that the CPU was pegged at over 50% (mostly over 75%) for over 180 seconds using the MobileMail app.
I also see a "MobileMail_DATE" report that indicates that there was an 'Exception raised during monitored invocation of _loadMoreMessagesWithMaxVisibleIndexPath:maximumIndexPathsBySource:, exception: ** -[__NSArrayM objectAtIndex:]: index 4294967295 beyond bounds for empty array"
And finally I see three "stacks+MobileMail-DATE" reports with "Power assertion timeout for 'com.apple.message.fetchMobileSynchronously...' Simply resetting it now." and "Power assertion timeout for 'com.apple.mobilemail.messagebodyloader' Simply resetting it now" reports.
I updated to iOS 7.0.4 and decided to try and delete the account in my Mail settings and recreate it and set it to manual instead of the non-working fetch. Now, when I try to check my mail it still takes up to five minutes to respond, pulling the screen to refresh brings up the spinner for about one second and then disappears and no indications of activity occur until about three minutes later when I see the spinner in the status bar near the clock and then see a notification that it's downloading X of Y messages. At that point, message headers come in very quick and then about a minute later message previews come in. At random times, opening the mail app I get a "Password incorrect" error, even though the password works on other attempts.

Mail App downloading incomplete attachments

Hi, I've been having an issue with the mail app in Mavericks. Sometimes, when downoading an attachment in an email it shows it as downloaded, but when i try to open it it says the file cannot be openned because it may be damaged. The file size showed is smaller than the actual file. I have no problems downloading and opening the same file form icloud.com. This has happened several times. Does anyone know how to fix it? Thank you very much.

Please follow these directions to delete the Mail "sandbox" folders. In OS X 10.9 there are two sandboxes, while in 10.8 there is only one. If you're running a version older than 10.8, this comment isn't applicable.
Back up all data.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Reveal
from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a folder named "com.apple.mail" selected. If it does, move the selected folder—not just its contents—to the Desktop. Leave the Finder window open for now.
Log out and log back in. Launch Mail and test. If the problem is resolved, you may have to recreate some of your Mail settings. You can then delete the folder you moved and close the Finder window.
This action will delete any custom Mail stationery that you have created. If you want to preserve it, ask for instructions.
If you still have the problem, quit Mail again and put the folder back where it was, overwriting the one that may have been created in its place. Repeat with this line:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.MailServiceAgent
Caution: If you change any of the contents of the sandbox, but leave the folder itself in place, Mail may crash or not launch at all. Deleting the whole sandbox will cause it to be rebuilt automatically.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Mail app using old Address Book group list

I have a strange problem. Using OS 10.7.2 and iCloud on my mac. I just removed all of the entries from a group contact in Address Book and added new ones. It shows up with the new list when I check my contacts on-line on iCloud.com.
The problem is in Mail.app. When I create a new message and type the group name, it is somehow using an old list of contacts for that group. I deleted everything from the "Previous Recipients" list thinking that would help, but it didn't.
Any idea why Mail is not using the address book correctly?
Thanks.

A computer restart seems to have solved the problem.

OSX Mail only downloads 1 message at a time

For some reason, recently, Mail has started downloading only 1 email at a time. If I've been away from the computer, I have to keep hitting get mail over and over for each email to be downloaded into my box. I have other email accounts in Mail that don't do that and it doesn't happen on my iphone, or in my gmail web based mail. Only in Mac Mail. HELP??? It's making me crazy! How do I fix it???

Hello harmonyjones.
Maybe the info provided by Google [here|http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=13291&topic=12812] (click the link) will prove useful.
I also recommend using Gmail's IMAP access over POP. Google provides over 7 GB of storage at the moment, so I personally only download the message text with Mail.app and keep all the attachments on the server in order to save space on my hdd. If you want more info on how to switch to Gmail IMAP, I'll post a detailed description.
Good computing.
floba
(MN496)

Mail re-sends old messages

old messages (~6 months) get re-sent???

My mail application is completely screwed up: it
re-sends old messages to people and it's becoming a
HUGE problem. It's completely random but it happens
at least once a day. I'm also having trouble with
attachments -- i often can't open them (even though
it's just a file or something).
I would like to trash the application and just
re-install it. Does anyone know how to do this?
The easiest way is to use a program called "Pacifist." It allows individual packages to be installed. Just Google the program name and mac and download it. ($20 shareware and totally worth it)
Use your original OSX 10.4 install disk and run pacifist and re-install the mail package using Pacifist. Download any updates (ie: OS X 10.4.5 combined) and repeat the process with the updated mail application included in the combination package.
You will now have a fresh, current install of mail.

HT2500 Some months ago, my Apple Mail started downloading duplicate messages every time it checked for mail. It doesn't happen to my gmail, but happens to my POP account. What happened or what did I do to cause this and how do I stop the downloading of du

How do I get Applemail to stop downloading duplicate messages. It only started doing this 4 months ago. It didn't happen for 5 years before and doesn't happen to my gmail account.

For what it's worth, you posted this in 2011, and here in 2014 I am still having this same issue. Over the last two days, I have had to unlock my apple account 8 times. I didn't get any new devices. I haven't initiated a password reset. I didn't forget my password. I set up two factor authentication and have been able to do the unlocking with the key and using a code sent to one of my devices.
That all works.
It's this having to unlock my account every time I go to use any of my devices. And I have many: iMac, iPad, iPad2, iPad mini, iPhone 5s, iPod touch (daughter), and my old iPhone 4 being used as an ipod touch now. They are all synced, and all was working just fine.
I have initiated an incident with Apple (again) but I know they are just going to suggest I change my Apple ID. It's a simple one, and one that I am sure others think is theirs. I don't want to change it. I shouldn't have to. Apple should be able to tell me who is trying to use it, or at least from where.
Thanks for listening,
Melissa

Changing Mail.app Check New Messages Frequency to Every 2 mins?

I'm running Lion 10.7.3 with Mail.app 5.2.
In Mail > Preferences > General
There's a setting to change "Check for New Messages" with a pulldown for every 1 minute, every 5 mins, etc.
Is there a way, possibly via terminal settings, to change this to check for new messages every two minutes?
The reason for this is that I currently have my mail.app set to check email every minute for all my accounts. It mostly works, however, occasionally this is too many requests for my mail server and I get the dreaded pop-up requesting the password for the account. When this happens, all mail checking is stopped until I confirm the password (which is already correct) or cancel the request. It's a pain because I'm not always at my computer to instantly confirm this and then it can go hours without checking mail. Thus, checking mail every two minutes might work perfectly. Every 5 minutes seems a bit too long.
Any help is appreciated, thanks.

Mike Mcgee wrote:
It mostly works, however, occasionally this is too many requests for my mail server and I get the dreaded pop-up requesting the password for the account. When this happens, all mail checking is stopped until I confirm the password (which is already correct) or cancel the request. It's a pain because I'm not always at my computer to instantly confirm this and then it can go hours without checking mail. Thus, checking mail every two minutes might work perfectly. Every 5 minutes seems a bit too long.
Actually Mike underestimates the annoyance -- Mail quite easily gets itself into a snit where it keeps asking for the password over and over, and the only way to get it out of the loop is to quit Mail and relaunch it. For those of us with 9 mailboxes, and we've got it set so that mail does not remember passwords, this is annoying! (Why do I have 9 mailboxes and don't save any passwords? Because I used to have 10 mailboxes opened, and relied on the saved passwords, and then one time they got wiped out and I realized that I had clean forgotten one of them. I made the decision to always put passwords in manually so that I will not forget them. When you get to be old and senile you will use these tricks, too.)
But, anyway, Mike's original problem is that a 1-minute check time breaks mail and he is annoyed by this. If he goes through all the hoops to hack it to 2 minutes, he might just find himself in exactly the same place and need to set it back to 5 anyway. Nathan, I'm glad you work somewhere that management is willing to spend cash updating mail servers so that your spam gets instantly delivered, but my management wants to spend money on other things.

Mail app not deleteing messages in trash like it's supposed to

I have a .mac email account. In "Mailbox Behaviors" I have checked "Move deleted messages to the Trash Mailbox" and "Store Deleted Messages on Server". I also have selected "Permenantly erase deleted messages when: one day old".
The problem is that mail is not deleting my messages when one day old. The messages just sit there in the trash forever.
Anyone else have this problem or have any ideas on how to solve?
Thanks.
EDIT: The message was deleted when I quit mail and restarted. I don't understand. Usually I leave my mail app up and running 24/7. I thought that selecting "Permenantly erase deleted messages when: one day old" was supposed to do that even if the mail app was running all the time, when it syncronizes? But I have to quit mail and restart it to get it to do that?

Hi, McToast.
I don't use .Mac mail, but I've noticed the same behavior w.r.t. "Delete messages when one day old." Personally, I think it's a bug. I just press Command-K every once in awhile in Mail to delete all the Trash: I have mail set up to move everything that is considered Junk to the Trash vs. a Junk mailbox.
I submitted a Mac OS X Feedback on this months ago. You may want to do the same.
You might want to check the Mail & Address Book Discussion, which is where Mail-related questions should be posted.
Good luck!
Dr. Smoke
Author: Troubleshooting Mac® OS X

Mail.app downloading old messages again

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