Mail must import your messages

Mail has displayed the subject message several times since installing Leopard. The entire structure and all messages are re-imported. Afterwards, I need to rebuild all mailboxes one by one to see the messages. Anyone have a clue as to what is going on? This has cost me hours and hours and I have permanently lost some messages.

Hello, and welcome to the Discussions.
Your issue is a result of some corruption to the Envelope Index -- the one universal index that Mail 2.x and 3.x both use, but which earlier versions of Mail did not.
If you do not have enough free, available disk space on your hard drive (or if partitioned, on the boot partition) then Mail is not finishing some of its housekeeping.
If space is not the issue (how much free on your boot volume?) then report whether you or some piece of software, is moving messages, mailboxes or folders around in the Mail folder, but not in the application Mail, such as some backup procedures?
More info, please.
Ernie

Similar Messages

I click on mail and it says it must import my messages. Then I click continue and it says import failed

I have a Macbook Pro Laptop. I click on mail and it says it must import my messages. Then I click continue and it says import failed.

Lion ate ALL my Mail: Apple Support Communities

Having mail 4.5 issues- open mail and get a new features message so I must import messages first in order to use mail 4.5. Just recently put in MAC OSX 10.6.7. Once it imports click done to start using mail, but end up with the rainbow wheel? Now What?

Having mail 4.5 issues- open mail and get a new features message that says in order to use the new features, I must import existing messages into the new version first in order to use mail 4.5. Just recently put in MAC OSX 10.6.7. Once it imports I am to click done to start using mail, but end up with the rainbow wheel of death and it also says you cannot use mail until the import is finished? Now What?

Is Mail still "spinning"? If it's been doing that for a while, I'd kill it, using either Activity Monitor or the OS X application picker. Then relaunch Mail and see what happens.
Two "by the ways":
1) Your system details mention an PPC iMac. Since a non-Intel Mac can't run OS X 10.6, you seem to have another Mac. You might want to consider updating your system details.
2) You seem to have been misled by the poor labeling of the message composition fields on this forum into trying to enter your entire post into the "subject" field. In the future, just enter a summary of your post there and the main text into the field below it.

Yosemite: Mail folders moved and messages disappear

OS X 10.10.1 on a Mac Mini 2.6 GHz, 8gb RAM, 1tb HD, Gmail setup as IMAP in Mail, personal mail folders sorted alphabetically
Intermittently while moving Inbox messages to personal folders, or opening messages in personal folders, the folders will drop to the bottom of the folder list and messages within the folders will disappear. Rebuilding the mailbox will usually make the messages appear, however the personal folders have to be moved back to their original positions. These instances have occurred frequently enough to be annoying and time wasting. Please advise. Thanks.

Quit Mail. Force quit if necessary.
Back up all data before proceeding.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData
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. Paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V, then press return.
A folder window will open. Inside it there should be files with names as follows:
          Envelope Index
          ExternalUpdates.storedata
Move those files to the Desktop, leaving the window open. Other files in the folder may have longer names that begin as above. Move those files, if any, to the Trash.
Relaunch Mail. It should prompt you to re-import your messages. You may get a warning that the index is damaged and that Mail has to quit. Click OK. Typically, the process takes a few minutes, but it may take hours if you have gigantic mailboxes. In that case, you may be able to speed things up by temporarily adding your home folder to the Privacy list in the Spotlight preference pane. Remove it when Mail has finished importing.
Test. If Mail now works as expected, you can delete the files you moved to the Desktop. Otherwise, post your results.

Mail won't preview messages since 10.9.3 update

Since the last OS update Mail does not like to preview. When I get new mail or scroll through recent messages the preview pane show "Loading.." or just dark gray (no content). If I double click and open the message in a window I get the same result.
Tried Genius Bar. They dleted a plist file and it help for a few minutes.
Tried to Rebuild. No deiscernable help there.

Quit Mail. Force quit if necessary.
Back up all data. That means you know you can restore the Mail database, no matter what happens.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData
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. Paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V, then press return.
A folder window will open. Inside it there should be files with names as follows:
Envelope Index
ExternalUpdates.storedata
Move those files to the Desktop, leaving the window open. Other files in the folder may have longer names that begin as above. Move those files, if any, to the Trash.
Relaunch Mail. It should prompt you to re-import your messages. You may get a warning that the index is damaged and that Mail has to quit. Click OK. Typically, the process takes a few minutes, but it may take hours if you have gigantic mailboxes. In that case, you may be able to speed things up by temporarily adding your home folder to the Privacy list in the Spotlight preference pane. Remove it when Mail has finished importing.
Test. If Mail now works as expected, you can delete the files you moved to the Desktop. Otherwise, post your results.

On 10.4.11 Mac Mail I get this: Mail cannot update your mailboxes because your home directory is full. You must free up space in your home folder before using Mail. Delete unnedded documents or move documents to another volume. I can't open mail.

On 10.4.11 iMac Mac Mail I get this message: "Mail cannot update your mailboxes because your home directory is full. You must free up space in your home folder before using Mail. Delete unneeded documents or move documents to another volume." I can't open mail to do this. I have reinstalled software but no effect. How do I get into Mail to delete?

Found this on the "more like this" Worked like a charm!
With the Mail.app quit and using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail. Copy the Mail folder and place the copy on the Desktop for backup purposes.
Go to Home > Library > Mail > Envelope Index. Move the Envelope Index file to the Desktop.
Launch Mail and you will be prompted to import mailboxes. Select OK and allow the import process to complete.
After confirming all mailboxes were successfully imported and available, you can delete the copy of the Mail folder and old Envelope Index file from the Desktop and this should resolve the problem.

Why is Mail unable to import existing messages after upgrade to Tiger?

After upgarading to Tiger, I opened Mail and was informed that all existing mail messages needed to be imported in the new version. Everything started out fine until 'sent' messages were being imported. The time for the import went from a few minutes to 14+ hours and the count remained stuck at 1,634. I cancelled the import and tried it again but each time the sticking point is at 1,634 messages

The conversion from Mail 1.x to Mail 2.x is broken. Here’s an example of the most common variant of this problem and how to proceed in those cases:
Just upgraded, Most of my old Inbox is gone!
Your problem, however, is different in that you don’t even get past an incomplete conversion. If Mail stalls during the conversion process, you may try to identify the mailboxes that Mail is choking on, quit Mail, move those mailboxes out of ~/Library/Mail/ (e.g. to the Destkop), and trash any Envelope Index-named files you may see in ~/Library/Mail/, so that Mail re-creates the index and tries to import the remaining mailboxes again, then manually import the problematic mailboxes as Other.
<hr>
Alternatively, you may want to set up Mail from scratch and manually import your mail back afterwards. This would allow you to use Mail normally while solving the problem of importing the old mail as you see fit:
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.
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. Do File > Import Mailboxes 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.
There are two ways to import Mail 1.x mailboxes into Mail 2.x. The obvious one is importing them as Mail for Mac OS X. But Mail 1.x stored mail in standard mbox format plus some additional support files, and this allows Mail 1.x mailboxes to also be imported as Other, i.e. as generic mailboxes in standard mbox format.
Importing as Mail for Mac OS X produces the best results when it works, because it takes into consideration all the files in the mailboxes, not just the mbox files where the messages are stored, and hence, allows information such as status flags to be preserved. Importing as Other, on the other hand, may work in cases where importing as Mail for Mac OS X doesn’t, because it looks at the mbox files only, ignoring the support files which is what Mail 2.x usually chokes on, but precisely because of that, information such as status flags is lost and previously deleted messages may reappear.
Hence, you may try importing as much as you can as Mail for Mac OS X, then import the problematic mailboxes as Other.
Note that what Mail asks for when importing depends on the format chosen. Mail always asks for the folder that contains the “things” to be imported. If Mail for Mac OS X is chosen as the data format, the “things” to be imported are the *.mbox folders, so you must choose the folder that contains them, not the *.mbox folders themselves. On the other hand, if Other is chosen as the data format, the “things” to be imported are the mbox files, so you must choose the *.mbox folders that contain them in that case.
Note also that some of the mailboxes now on the Desktop may have already been partially converted to the new *.emlx format during the previous (failed) attempt to convert them in place. If you tell Mail 2.x to import as Mail for Mac OS X a mailbox that already has a Messages folder, Mail will simply ignore the Mail 1.x files present there. If the mailbox was successfully converted to the new format, that’s fine, but if the conversion was incomplete, that’s not what you want.
As a result of doing all 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.

Mail Won't Launch - Message Says Home Folder is Full Must Delete Files

I having been using Mail 2.0.7 with relatively few annoyances until today when I launched the application only to have a window pop up that says "Mail cannot update your mailboxes because your home directory is full. You must free up space in your home folder before using Mail. Delete unneeded documents or move documents to another volume." The only option is to Quit. The 30GB hard drive is half full. The home folder has a little over 6GB in it. I deleted a few larger files and still get this message. I re-installed the application using Pacifist. Still the same prohibition.

Hi there,
Mac OS X 10.4: "Mail cannot update your mailboxes because your home directory is full" alert
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA24486

ICal: You must add your own card and email address in Contacts to be able to use mail alerts.

Problems with Mountain Lion. Have never had these problems previously. Have been a mac user since 1990.
iTunes no longer sends music to my airport express. NO FIX EXISTS !
Now iCal every time I want to send an email alert puts up this message: You must add your own card and email address in Contacts to be able to use mail alerts.
COME ON I HAVE DONE THIS OVER AND OVER TO NO RESULT.
MACINTOSH WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
UNHAPPY !

Try setting up another admin user account to see if the same problem continues. If Back-to-My Mac is selected in System Preferences, the Guest account will not work.
Isolating an issue by using another user account
If the problem is still there, try booting into the Safe Mode. Shut down the computer and then power it back up. Immediately after hearing the startup chime, hold down the shift key and continue to hold it until the gray Apple icon and a progress bar appear. The boot up is significantly slower than normal.
Safe Mode
Safe Mode - About
General information.
Isolating issues in Mac OS X
Troubleshooting Permission Issues
Step by Step to Fix Your Mac

You must add your own card and email address in Contacts to be able to use mail alerts. mean

I am trying to set up notifications in Calendars. I click "custom" and choose email. I get a message"You must add your own card and email address in Contacts to be able to use mail alerts." I have my own email address entered into Contacts, but don't know what this message intends, or how to deal with it. Please advise.
Thanks

Thank you Eric. So easy, when you know what you're doing.
Thanks.

Just upgraded to Yosemite 10.10.2 on my iMac 24 inch and now my Suddenlink POP email account won't accept messages. The message says unable to receive Mail and the warning says: Mail cannot send your password securely to the server. You can remove th

Yesterday I uploaded Yosemite 10.10.2 thinking it was fixed by now. In Mail, my POP account gets this error message: Mail cannot send your password securely to the server. You can remove this restriction in the Accounts preferences by setting “Allow insecure authentication”, which could put your password at risk.
My provider says it's an Apple issue. The gmail accounts are logging in fine. Any help? Something simple?
Thanks anyone.

Thanks Csound1. That did work and Mail was able to connect to the internet. Green light status. Is it because of my provider that I may never have had secure connections? Is that an Apple thing or do PCs have the same issues? Appreciate your help. I'll research insecure connections as I am ignorant of the consequences.

I can no longer send mail....today I cannot get mail..., I can no longer send mail....today I cannot get mail...a message pops up that says:A copy has been placed in your outbox.Sending the message content to the server failed....any help?

I can no longer send mail....today I cannot get mail..., I can no longer send mail....today I cannot get mail...a message pops up that says:A copy has been placed in your outbox.Sending the message content to the server failed....any help?

How long has it been going on? I've had my yahoo mess up and if i wait a bit it resolves itself. Yahoo is doing something with their servers and it messes with your mail if your mail happens to be on one of those servers.

I get this pop up when trying to make a photo book in the iPhoto store. Some or all of the photos you selected were downloaded from your published albums. You can only view these photos. To use them in an album or a slideshow or project, you must import t

I get this pop up when trying to create a photo book through the iPhoto store.
"Some or all of the photos you selected were downloaded from your published albums. You can only view these photos. To use them in an album or a slideshow or project, you must import them to your photo library."
The photos I have selected have already been imported so how and why do I do it all over again?
What do they mean by published albums? I categorize them into photo albums for organizational purposes after I import them from my camera or phone. So why can't I put them into a book now?
I have over 400 photos selected for a photo book for my child's graduation gift so how can I tell which photos I have to do this to?
Please help. Any insight wouyld be appreciated.
Confused and frustrated...

Give this a try: apply the two fixes below in order as needed:
Fix #1
Launch iPhoto with the Command+Option keys held down and rebuild the library.
Since only one option can be run at a time start with Option #3, followed by #4 and then #1 as needed.
OT

After itunes installation an error message is shown, (itunes could not connect to the iphone, because it is locked with a passcode, you must enter your passcode on your iphone before it can be used with itunes)

after itunes installation an error message is shown, (itunes could not connect to the iphone, because it is locked with a passcode, you must enter your passcode on your iphone before it can be used with itunes)

Hi ..
Follow the instructions here > iOS: Forgotten passcode or device disabled after entering wrong passcode

Hi, For no apparent reason my phone stopped working...so I did a reset and got the message 'Restore Needed'. I connected to iTunes and got this message: 'iTunes could not connect to the iPhone because it is locked with a passcode. You must enter your pas

Hi,
For no apparent reason my phone stopped working...so I did a reset and got the message 'Restore Needed'. I connected to iTunes and got this message: 'iTunes could not connect to the iPhone because it is locked with a passcode. You must enter your passcode on your iPhone before it can be used with iTunes'.
The problem is, I can't enter my passcode because I'm not given that option on the iPhone. All I seem to be able to do is make an emergency call.
It's been working fine otherwise. Any suggestions?
This is the SECOND replacement iPhone I've had this week and I'm getting a bit fed up.
Thanks in advance for any help,

Are you referring to the 4 digit passcode needed to enter the phone and use it's features?
If so reboot your iPhone and enter the passcode to get it operational. Launch Image Capture on the Mac and connect the iPhone. Now you should be able to download the video files to wherever you want on your hard drive.
OT

Mail must import your messages

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for