Mail Just Isn't Doing What it Should

Question

I've been having problems with Mail for the past few months, and I've become so fed up I needed to post here to see if anyone has any suggestions on how to make things better.
My original problem was that mail would keep downloading messages I had deleted from the server, especially spam messages, such that I would have to delete the same spam message 6-7 times per day to keep my mailbox free of spam. My trash folder would like rather ridiculous with many duplicate copies of the same message. I would've thought that mail would download a message from the server only once, and especially if I had deleted it it wouldn't download it again. Anyways, it didn't do this and I was quite disappointed.
This was all while I was trying to "train" the mail program to recognize the spam from real messages, and even though some real messages were still getting tagged as spam, I needed to take it out of training so I wouldn't have the issue of deleting spam so often. So, I recently took the mail program out of training mode and set it to move spam to the junk folder (because of my real messages still being tagged as spam). As soon as I did this the scads of spam suddenly became no longer the yellow spam color that I've known to despise, but instead look black like regular messages. Because of this they are not moved into the junk folder. However when I click on them mail still thinks they are junk because I get the button to click to say that it is (Not Junk)
Now as of this morning, Mail seems to have forgotten all of its training and is no longer setting /anything/ to junk. I am just so frustrated with this program. Usually Apple's programs are so amazing. Am I doing something terribly wrong?

Answer 1

Jeffrey,
Welcome to the Discussions. I am sorry you have waited so long to post about these issues.
For the problem of repeated downloads, this is likely the result of some corruption in the files named MesssageUidsAlreadyDownded (there can be two), which is found in every POP account folder, along with many other files, including those storing Rules info, and Junk Rules info. This corruption can sometimes, but not often, result from strangely formated HTML messages, and problem does not happen with every mail server.
First question that might relate to the other problem you mention is how much free disk space is on your hard drive, or if partitioned, on the boot partition?
Second question is, was the Mail folder converted from one used by Panther's Mail program? If so, Are you using a POP account? If so, I want you to read the article at the link below, and then get back to me with some observations:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301315
This issue of leftover files applies not only to mailbox you have previously created (which are in the Mailboxes folder the article mentioned) but can also apply to those mailboxes in account folders created prior to the upgrade to Tiger.
Also, some issues could arise from a truly Overstuffed mailbox, so when you report to me the names of files seen in your INBOX.mbox folder of your principal account (if more than one), also report the size of each file or folder. Do not, however, try to list the files that are within the folder named Messages, that is found in each and every mailbox. I doubt this is applicable.
The path to the Mail folder is Home/Library/Mail -- within the Mail folder are one or more account folders and the Mailboxes folder.
More info, please.
Ernie