Mail seems to create Mail folders that are not allowed to be backed up.

Question

The folder in my Home>Library>Mail that had my Inbox in it was titled POP/[email protected]@myserver.net, or the specific equivalent.
When I was backing up everything to an exterior hard drive, I got a message saying the name was too long, or had incorrect characters in it.
I boldly shortened the name by taking the second @myserver.net off, keeping my fingers crossed, and all seemed to go well, until the next time I opened Mail, and most of my Inbox was gone. And all of the emails I had deleted in the last month or so were back in my Inbox.
It turns out that on launching Mail, my computer had created a new POP/[email protected]@myserver.net folder, but had only transferred a small chunk of my old emails to fill it.
So I went back and looked at the POP folder whose name I'd changed, and all the old emails were there. So I copied each item in the non-allowed folder to the Mail folder in the exterior hard drive, created a new folder there with the shortened title POP/[email protected], stuck all the items in it, just for tidiness. I was able to access these mailboxes from my Mail program.
So now I had backed them up, which was a weight off my mind. But I believe I lost emails like this previously when backing up, and didn't figure out how to find and save them, and now they are probably gone forever.
What I want to know is why Mail creates folders with titles that it will not allow itself to back up.
iBook   Mac OS X (10.3.9)  

Answer 1

Hello, and welcome to the Discussions.
I think something else must have happened, for I have
never had this happen. I have just tested copying my
POP folder with the longest name, and no problem.
The name had the same number of characters, and
format as the following:
[email protected]@mail.xxxxxx.net
However, I note that the form you report (that of
beginning with POP/) is not the current form Mail has
used for some time, but rather would be expected to
begin as "POP-". Nevertheless, I would not have
expected that, alone, to cause the behavior you
report.
More info, please.
Ernie
Hi Ernie,
Maybe it was something to do with the permissions. Last time I tried to verify my permissions, I was unable to. I got a message saying my disc could not connect with Disc Utility, or was disfunctional in some precarious way. A somewhat scary experience that I am not in a big hurry to repeat.
Based partly on your info, I have decided instead to upgrade to Tiger immediately, and am hoping this will alleviate some or all aspects of these problems.
Thanks for your input,
Stephen