Preventing typing causing selecting old messages in Mail

When you're in Mail in OS X just in the Message Viewer and you begin to type on your keyboard -- let's say accidentally -- Mail will automatically begin scrolling to messages based on what you're typing. For example, if you type the letter w, it will scroll to a message that has a subject beginning with the letter w -- like "we are going to the beach today."
This is REALLY ANNOYING behavior!
How can I prevent random keystrokes from causing this scrolling to messages based on the subject behavior???
It's maddening. Thanks to anyone who knows how to disable it.

So, if I understand right, you want to export messages in such a way that you could re-import them into Mail if you ever wanted or needed to?
If so, do this. First, place these messages in an appropriately-named mailbox. You will be deleting this mailbox later, so you may want to create one specifically for this purpose. Also, make sure this is a local mailbox, not one stored on an IMAP server. Next, go to your Mail folder (in ~/Library/Mail/, where ~ means your home folder). In there, open the Mailboxes folder and locate the one you put the messages into. Copy it to a new location, wherever you want it to be for archival. Finally, go back to the Mail app and delete that mailbox (and all mail inside it).
In the future, if you want to import this mailbox again, just choose choose File->Import Mailboxes, select Mail for Mac OS X in the window that appears, press Continue and then select the folder that contains the mailbox you want to import. (This is counter-intuitive, IMO -- don't select the mailbox folder itself, or Mail will complain it can't find any mailboxes.)
Good luck!

Similar Messages

Unable to select multiple messages in Mail.

Hi,
I can't select multiple messages in Mail app. After selecting few, all of them automatically deselects. This is really annoying. I'm on 6.1.2 iP5, and this is happening from the begining. Never happened before on my iP4. The other problem with mail app is that it keeps opening my "first on the account list" e-mail account, and please don't tell me that this is normal since it never happened before. Sometimes when I try to open a random account I see a black screen
see an image below.
Please help me as this is driving me crazy.

Camelot wrote:
to select all messages in the current mailbox you enter command+A. then use "apply rules" from the Message menu. you can also do it with just a few selected messages. select them, control-click on the selected messages and choose "apply rules".
Interesting interpretation of the OP's request.
I read the request as wanting to take one action that applied to many messages, rather than apply one rule many times.
For example, consider a rule that forwards the message to some other address. Selecting all messages and running the rule will generate multiple new messages - one per selected item.
that was my understanding of what the OP wanted. perhaps I'm wrong. let's wait for the OP to respond and clarify what he/she really wants.
Conversely, and how I interpreted the request, an AppleScript could collate all the selected messages and combine them into one new message - essentially running the 'forward' on many items at once.
I'll be interesting to see the OP's response to see which matches his requirements.
Message was edited by: V.K.

How do I manage old messages in Mail on my Mac?

Hi,
I can no longer receive Yahoo messages in Mail on my Mac.
This could be because I have over 20,000 messages in my Inbox?
I'm wondering if there is a way I can arrange for Mail to delete and
archive all these messages so I don't have to do it manually?
If there is a way, please explain how to do it.
Thanks all!

Select the bottom or top e-mail, then hold down the shift key and select the last e-mail, the Mail/Message/Archive.

Possible to select multiple messages in Mail?

I'm in the process of switching to Mail and am setting up rules. I want to apply a rule to multiple messages at one time, instead of applying the rule to each individual message, one by one. I cannot find a way to Select All or otherwise apply a rule to a bunch of messages (that are already in my InBox) all at once. Can anyone help? Thank you!

Camelot wrote:
to select all messages in the current mailbox you enter command+A. then use "apply rules" from the Message menu. you can also do it with just a few selected messages. select them, control-click on the selected messages and choose "apply rules".
Interesting interpretation of the OP's request.
I read the request as wanting to take one action that applied to many messages, rather than apply one rule many times.
For example, consider a rule that forwards the message to some other address. Selecting all messages and running the rule will generate multiple new messages - one per selected item.
that was my understanding of what the OP wanted. perhaps I'm wrong. let's wait for the OP to respond and clarify what he/she really wants.
Conversely, and how I interpreted the request, an AppleScript could collate all the selected messages and combine them into one new message - essentially running the 'forward' on many items at once.
I'll be interesting to see the OP's response to see which matches his requirements.
Message was edited by: V.K.

Dragging to select multiple messages in Mail 6.0 and OS 10.8

With recent software updates, there no longer seems to be a way to select multiple messages other than shift-click. I have always just dragged to select a number at once that I need to delete or move for one reason or another, which is much faster. what happened to the drag to select multiple messages in recent mail and OS 10.8 incarnations
Thanks

https://discussions.apple.com/message/19031608#19031608

Any way to retrieve old messages to Mail after reinstalling OS?

Hi,
My hard drive crashed and I had to buy a new drive, so I lost the 20,000 messages that had been saved in my inbox. I use gmail and another local server (optonline). Is there any way to pull these messages off the server and into my mail program so I can have them in my new mail? I really need to be able to access these messages from my hard drive. Thanks!

did you use gmail IMAP or gmail POP? if you used gmail IMAP then all your messages are on the server and all you need to do is set up your gmail IMAP account in Mail. it will sync with the server and you'll get all your messages. If you used gmail POP then it depends on whether you kept the messages on server after retrieving them. if you didn't they are gone. if you did then you have two options
1. set up gmail IMAP.
2. set up gmail POP, then go to webmail gmail->settings->forwarding & POP/IMAP and check the option to allow POP downloading ALL messages.

Mail lost all settings and does not allow to see old messages

One day I launched mail and it appeared as if it was starting for the first time. I aborted the procedure, rebooted and relaunched mail but again. So I regave all the necessary parameters. Then I noticed that Mail had actually kept all the previously custom folders but would not show -a part from the most recent ones- all older messages in Inbox. I looked into Library/Mail/mailboxes and found the missing messages but whenever trying to reimport them into mail got the message that Mail could not find messages in a format acceptable to Mac OS. Actually the messages can be opened with the Mail (but not imported) and have extension .emlx
As an addtional info, the problem appeared shortly after I had switched hosting service but I do not see how this could have affected mails sitting in my hard disk.
It should also be noted that I am receiving and reading new mails without problem.
Any suggestion on how to recover my messages and have them again accessible in my Inbox?
Thanks.
Stefano

What you’ve described could be the result of having set up the account differently and Mail not recognizing the account folder already present in ~/Library/Mail/ — see below a more thorough description of this particular issue. If this is a POP account, the most recent messages in Inbox might appear to have been preserved because they were still on the server and Mail downloaded them again as if you had never set up this account in Mail before.
Under some circumstances (e.g. lack of available disk space, filesystem corruption, repeated crashes), Mail may discard the current ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist preferences file and create a new one. This file is where all the account settings are stored. As a result, all your non-.Mac account settings (but not the messages themselves) are lost. If you had a .Mac account, its settings would appear to have been preserved because Mail would set up that account automatically using the System Preferences > .Mac settings.
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 ensuring that there’s enough space available on the startup disk (a few GB, plus the space needed to make a backup copy of the Mail folder), quit Mail if it’s running, and make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, e.g. by dragging it to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, just in case something else goes wrong while trying to solve the problem. This is where all your mail is stored.
There are three ways you could have solved this problem (#2 is what you did):
(1) Restore ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist from a backup if you have one. Mail shouldn’t be running while you do this.
(2) Set up your mail accounts again. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don’t. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in ~/Library/Mail/ when done. You’ll also have to re-configure most of 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.
(3) Mail may have renamed the old preferences file to com.apple.mail.plist.saved. If that’s the case, you may try trashing the new com.apple.mail.plist and renaming the old com.apple.mail.plist.saved back to com.apple.mail.plist. Again, be sure Mail isn’t running while doing this. Given the circumstances, I would expect com.apple.mail.plist.saved to be corrupt, but apparently that often is not the case and the settings can indeed be restored by just renaming it back to com.apple.mail.plist.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.
<hr>
For each mail account, Mail creates a folder in ~/Library/Mail/ whose name starts with the account type (POP, IMAP, Mac), followed by the account username and the incoming mail server.
When re-creating com.apple.mail.plist, setting up an account with a username and an incoming mail server that exactly match one of the already existing account folders in ~/Library/Mail/ causes Mail to automatically recognize and reuse that account folder. If the username and/or the incoming mail server are different and don’t match an already existing account folder, however, a new account folder is created from scratch, that account behaves as if it had never been set up in Mail before, the old account folder is simply ignored, and the messages it contains become inaccessible other than by manually importing them or setting up the account again.
If you have more account folders in ~/Library/Mail/ than accounts in Mail > Preferences > Accounts, that means some of the account folders have been created anew whereas others are being ignored by Mail (and hence, you don’t have access to the mailboxes and messages stored within them). You can, however, import their contents doing File > Import Mailboxes, choosing Mail for Mac OS X as the data format, and following the instructions. You can get rid of the unused account folders afterwards.
Pay attention to the instructions that Mail displays when choosing Mail for Mac OS X as the data format. In the next step, Mail wants you to select the folder that contains the mailboxes to be imported (i.e. the folder where the *.mbox folders to be imported reside), not the *.mbox folders themselves nor the Messages folders within them. If you select the wrong folder, Mail says “No valid Mail for Mac OS X files were found” because it cannot find any *.mbox folders within the folder you’re selecting.
Alternatively, you may try re-creating com.apple.mail.plist again and this time use the exact same username and incoming mail server that Mail used to name the old account folder.

New message in Mail; old message from a year ago being opened

Okay, so here's a weird one. It is the second time it has happened in a week.
I go to open a new message, however when I open it an old message from a year ago opens up in its place. It isn't even a year to date issue. For instance today (October 15) I opened a message dated today, and it pulled up an old message from a completely different sender dated May 16, 2006. It is not doing it with all of my new messages that came in today just the most recent one or two.
Any ideas/help?
tx!

What type of mail account is this (POP, IMAP, .Mac)? If IMAP or .Mac, try rebuilding the mailbox, i.e. select the mailbox in Mail and do Mailbox > Rebuild.

How do i stop Mail from downloading all my old messages without deleting them

Hello there,
    i've just bought a new 13 inch macbook pro, and i'm very happy with it. Being sort of new to apple i still have some problems though.
the main one concerns mail:   How do I prevent my laptop from downloading thousands of old messages i had stored on my gmail account?
let me be clearer: i set mail up and it instantly started downloading tons of old messages that i don't want stored on my mac, since it only has 128gb storage, but i'd still like to be able to look for them in case I needed to. so i don't want to permanently erase them, get rid of them here to save some space.
is that possible? and if yes how?
I also have an other problem with Mail and it's the fact that gmail doesn't let me send pages files...it says it could be a dangerous file so it stops me.
any solutions?
thanks to all of you

Csound1 wrote:
disguise wrote:
Sounds to me like your using iCloud to sync mail - but you don't want mail sync'd.
System Preferences -> iCloud
uncheck Mail
The OP is using Gmail, not iCloud.
How do I prevent my laptop from downloading thousands of old messages i had stored on my gmail account?
Unchecking Mail will do nothing at all.
And as Gmail is an Imap account it will download all mail in the account to the client.
If this is unwanted behaviour use a different email system (a POP system) or remove the mail from the Gmail server.
Gmail can be configured as POP or IMAP

Mail shows correct message Subject and Sender (in list) but displays an old message

OK, this is very weird.
I'm accessing Gmail using Mail 7.3 on an iMac running Mavericks 10.9.3.
A couple of days ago I started noticing that random emails -- not every one -- simply won't display in Mail. I can see that I got a new message, and the sender and Subject are correct. But if I click on it to see it in the preview pane, or if I double click on it to open it in a separate window, I get an entirely different message.
What displays is typically a 2 year old message, being pulled from my Google Archives! Very odd!
I have to use a web browser on gmail.com to see the message correctly. It also works fine on my iPhone.
FWIW, my gmail account is at 30% capacity. I archive almost everything immediately, so my inbox is rarely full. My archive box, of course, is huge. I just checked, and it's happening there, too! I don't see it happening in the junk file folder...
I use Mail for 8 other email accounts, including another gmail account. I haven't noticed the issue with any of the other accounts.
Any ideas? Thanks if so!
Cass

Thanks for the tip. I never saw Rebuild before in the menu.
So I selected the mailbox and hit Rebuild. It "blinked" and refreshed, took about 5 seconds--I thought it would take longer.
At any rate, no change. It's still happening.
Any other ideas?

I just opened my mail on icloud and all messages disappeared from the last year! I have one email left in my inbox which is the most recent. I moved to icloud 2 weeks ago and it has been working fine until now. How can I retrieve old messages? Thank you.

i just opened my mail on icloud and all messages disappeared from the last year! I have one email left in my inbox which is the most recent. I moved to icloud 2 weeks ago and it has been working fine until now. How can I retrieve old messages? Thank you.

I guess you could try but I don't believe Apple can help with activation lock issues. They may, however, be able to determine if the Apple ID belongs to one of you and reset the password for you if you can prove your identity.
You might want to try calling Apple by going to https://expresslane.apple.com; click 'More Products and Services, then 'Apple ID'. In the next page select 'Other Apple ID Topics' then 'Lost or forgotten Apple ID password'. Perhaps they can help determine if it's your ID and reset the password for you (and they probably have more expertise in doing this than the Apple store).

Import selected messages from Mail backup

I recently did a Carbon Copy Clone backup, switched my hard drive and cloned back to the new drive. So far, so good. But 3 days elapsed between the clone and the switch and I'd like to recover my Mail messages from that period. I have the old drive hitched up in an enclosure, am wondering if I can selectively import messages or do I have to import the whole mailbox?
Thanks,
Phoebe

Thanks for helping David. I can see individual messages in the (archive) mailboxes and when I click on them I can see their dates. I only need three days worth. I eventually worked around this by copying the ones I wanted to the desktop and then opening them in Mail and resending them to myself to get them into the mailbox. Clumsy but effective. I guess I could have imported them all and then deleted the ones I didn't need too.

HT201250 I selected old mail in time machine and it will not open. How can I open it?

I selected old mail in time machine and it will not open. How can I open it?

Have a read here https://discussions.apple.com/message/15701309#15701309
Seems that you have to update Logic to the latest version (9.0.15) to get it to work in Lion.
Stefan

Mail is moving old messages from folders into the inbox

Hey,
Mail has started behaving really weird. It has started to move old messages, from various folders into the inbox. When i try to move it back, i have to use the contextual menu to do that, drag and drop doesn't work.
Has anyone experienced this before? Help is greatly appriciated!
/Andreas

Hi Andreas.
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 ensuring that there’s enough space available on the startup disk (a few GB, plus the space needed to make a backup copy of the Mail folder), proceed as follows to re-create Mail’s index:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/. Make a backup copy of this folder, just in case something goes wrong, e.g. by dragging it to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down. This is where all your mail is locally stored.
3. Locate Envelope Index and move it to the Trash. If you see any other “Envelope Index”-named file there, delete it as well.
4. Move any “IMAP-”, “Mac-”, or “Exchange-” account folders to the Trash. Note that you can do this with IMAP-type accounts because they store mail on the server and Mail can easily re-create them. DON’T trash any “POP-” account folders, as that would cause all the mail stored there to be lost.
5. Open Mail. It will tell you that your mail needs to be “imported”. Click Continue and Mail will proceed to re-create Envelope Index — Mail says it’s “importing”, but it just re-creates the index if the mailboxes are already in Mail 2.x format.
6. As a side effect of having removed the IMAP account folders, those accounts may be in an “offline” state now. Do Mailbox > Go Online to bring them back online.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.

After aborted rebuild in Mail: I can see and select the message in the center pane and when I click on it to display, I get "Loading" text, but nothing comes up

I have searched quite a bit to find a resolution to this problem, with no success. Any help would be appreciated.
I decided to rebuild my inboxes by following this advice: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11704. The rebuild took several hours and at 96% (4 minutes remaining apparently), the indexing froze (that is, after 8 hours, the message was still telling me "4 minutes left"). I forced quit mail, restored the previous Envelope files from the trash, and everything seemed fine.
However, since this failed attempt, I can see and select the message in the center pane and when I click on it to display, I get "Loading" text, but nothing comes up. All messages in my various inboxes have the reloading problem, EXCEPT messages that I downloaded since the aborted rebuild (in other words, there are about 40 messages that I downloaded since I tried the rebuild and I have no problem with these). The other 70,000 messages however wont load, even though I can see them in the centre pane and spotlight has no problem finding them and showing me their contents (when I hover the mouse over the message). When I click on the message in spotlight, mail opens and the loading problem re-occurs.
Since then, based on various suggestions I found for similar issues, I have used Disk Utility to verify and repair permissions and the drive. I used Onix to rebuild the Mail index (that only took about a minute - I am not sure how to interpret this when compared to the hours the rebuild took with Mail). No joy, I still have the same problem. I even restored one of my inboxes via Time Machine and the same issue with loading continues.
I am using ML 10.8.2. I have a combination of IMAP accounts (work) and POP accounts (personal). The issue of loading occurs irrespective of the account.
I am baffled and am now considering migrating to either Thunderbird or Postbox 3 to try and solve my problem. I prefer to stay with Mail. I should note also that I am using MailTags with Mail (http://www.indev.ca/MailTags.html), although I have not used any of the features. I upgraded to ML from SL about 2 weeks ago. It was very smooth and there appear to be no issues (not sure how helpful this is and probably not at all related to this issue).
Any suggestions much appreciated!

Maybe these will help:
https://discussions.apple.com/message/17677533#17677533
https://discussions.apple.com/message/18324129#18324129
https://discussions.apple.com/message/18203126#18203126

Preventing typing causing selecting old messages in Mail

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