Mailbox is Corrupt in Several Ways...

Question

Hi There,
I've been surfing the forum and can't find anyone with this exact set of problems.
Last night, I opened up mail and all of a sudden,
1. it's marking old emails (almost 80 at a time) as having been unread
2. all of the new emails downloaded on to this computer are gone (though the ones I imported from my old G4 are here)
3. In all of my smart boxes, I all of a sudden have LOTS of new emails many of which are also marked as Junk, even though they'd meet none of my "mark as junk" rules
4. I am unable to receive new email in one of my POP accounts. Sometimes. Though there sometimes is an indication that there's new mail (10 new messages) but when I click on it I get the message is not downloaded from the server, you need to take this account online...etc.
I'm not even sure where to start. Other than running disk utility...?
Please let me know if you need other info. to help me...
Thank you in advance for your time & advice.

Answer 1

Hi Carolyn.
In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/. With that folder open, do Edit > Select All (⌘A), then Edit > Copy (⌘C), and paste it in your reply to this post, to let me see the names of the files and folders present at the root level of the Mail folder.
Before actually posting that information, you may edit it so that the file/folder names do not reveal any details you wish to keep private, e.g. you may replace any real username with "username" to hide your real email address if you wish; similarly, you may disguise any domain names you don't want to be revealed. Try to be consistent in how you disguise those details, though, as we may need to refer to them in subsequent posts.
Now, go to ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/. With that folder open, repeat the process to let me see the names of the files and folders it contains. Again, you may disguise any mailbox names you wish to keep private. Be careful to not alter any suffixes, though.
Finally, locate the account folders within ~/Library/Mail/ -- their name begins with the account type (POP, IMAP, Mac), followed by the account username and the incoming mail server. For each account folder, repeat the process to let me see the names of the files and folders it contains.
Also, proceed as follows in case the file where rules are stored has become corrupt and it's wreaking havoc:
1. Quit Mail if it's running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/.
3. Locate MessageRules.plist and move it to the Desktop. If there is a file called MessageRules.plist.backup, move it to the Desktop too. You may also see MessageSorting.plist files there; this is where Mail 1.x stored the rules, and they are no longer used by Mail 2.x, so just move them to the Trash if you see them.
The following steps are in case you want to continue using Mail while troubleshooting this. You may prefer to stop using it until I have a better understanding of what the problem is:
4. Open Mail. As a result of removing the rules file, the junk filter will be disabled now. You may want to either tell Mail to go offline immediately after opening it, or shut down the Internet connection before opening Mail, to prevent it from downloading anything until the junk mail filter has been enabled again.
5. Go to Mail > Preferences > Junk Mail, enable junk filtering, and configure it however you wish.
6. Go online again if you went offline in step 4.
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 file path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the file path there.