Mail expunge error and old mail switching to new mail status

Question

Everything started when I set to enabled in mail-general-when searching mail boxes: include encrypted pages.
I was looking for a way to seach in the content of the message for the mails.
Then the first error appeared: the mails when I read those mails returned by themselves to the state of unread.
Then I disabled again the optin: mail-general-when searching mail boxes: include encrypted pages,
but the error continued. and all my mails (more than 1200) were set automatically to the "new" mail status each time that I started the mail program.
Now I created a mailbox named "old" when I move the new messages that I have read to that file.
But now the mail program uses the memory constantly.
with out the mail, the computer memory is near 5%, but when I start the mail program and use it constantly, the memory goes to 100% until I receive the mail expunge error.
The machine has 4Ghz ram, and the mail program uses all until I got the error, I am using a G5, dual cpu, 2ghz, mac osx server. There are no other programs using the memory.
1)how can I configure the mail to avoid the expunge error?
2)how I can configure the mail to keep the mails that I just read to an old state (avoiding those to restart their state to "new")?
3)it is possible to do searchs in all the content of the messages?
thanks
Alberto

Answer 1

You’re welcome.
Well, not knowing what the problem really is, and since it apparently started to happen after you changed some settings, I’d try setting up Mail again from scratch and import your mail back afterwards.
Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
After having fixed all the filesystem issues, if any, and making sure that there’s enough space available on the startup disk, try this:
1. If you have a .Mac account and .Mac synchronization of Mail data is enabled either in Mail > Preferences > General or in System Preferences > .Mac, disable it before proceeding.
2. Quit Mail if it’s running.
3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/. Move (not copy) the entire Mail folder out of there, to the Desktop.
4. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate com.apple.mail.plist and move it to the Desktop.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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. Import the Mailboxes folder first, then each of the POP-username@mailserver account folders, if any.
8. If .Mac synchronization of Mail data was enabled at the beginning, enable it again, go to System Preferences > .Mac > Advanced, click Reset Sync Data, and choose the appropriate options to reset the Mail data stored on the .Mac server with the data locally stored on the computer, i.e. sync data must flow from the computer to the .Mac server.
As a result of doing the above, some messages may be duplicated. Andreas Amann’s Mail Scripts has a Remove Duplicates script that you may find useful.
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.