Spotlight constantly thrashing on mail folders

I'm using Entourage 2008 (and now Outlook 2011) to store thousands of emails. I was having a problem where my Time Machine was super-slow because it was always "waiting for index". I finally was able to track it down (using fs_usage | grep getattrlist, suggested by a kind Apple Discussions member) to the fact that my Spotlight was extremely busy constantly updating the Microsoft User Identity folder. After adding it to the privacy list, the TM was working great. However, with that folder excluded from Spotlight, I can't search for email! Anyone have any ideas - how is this to be avoided? How do people with large email databases (Exchange server access) use TM and Spotlight together? Any way to keep Spotlight's mds process (or whatever else it needs) more responsive to TM and spend less time constantly re-indexing the email folders?
Mike

No matter what mail program I use, disk thrashing occurs when I start the client. I now use mac mail which reads my exchange email account. The account does have a lot of emails in there, perhaps I might try deleting a few.

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I upgraded to Mavericks from 10.6.8 and I no longer have any of my mail folders in macmail. If I look up an email via spotlight, I can find it, so it's in there. How do I restore my folders?

I upgraded to Mavericks from 10.6.8 and I no longer have any of my mail folders in macmail. If I look up an email via spotlight, I can find it, so it's in there. How do I restore my folders?

As an update: I was able to find my archived boxes and emails on my hard drive by doing this:
Open a Finder window.
Select Go | Go to Folder… from the menu.
Type "~/Library/Mail/V2".
Once I was able to get my macmail working properly, most of my mailboxes appeared, however not all and only a few recent emails are in a few of the boxes.
I really need to move the emails from the archive back into my macmail. When I try to import using the mbox method, it doesn't recognize the .mbox even though they are .mbox. Other than re-emailing each individually to myself, I don't know what to do. Does anyone out there have any suggestions as to some easier solution?

Smart Folders, Spotlight comments and Apple mail messages

Hi,
I have a simple question, but couldn't figure it out yet:
I have a workflow that tags specific mail messages according to the specific mail inbox folders I assign them to (be it via incoming rules, or Act-On rules) by automatically adding specific Spotlight comments.
My mail messages, therefore, have text in their comment boxes (if you check via GetInfo).
When I use Spotlight, I can find mail messages by searching for the comments - this is exactly as expected.
I however also have smart folders (searching for a specific Spotlight comment) that list other files that I tag with the same Spotlight comments - but my Smart Folders never find the mail messages with the requested tags (at most they find the folder that contains the messages if this folder is tagged - which it is generally not).
Question: how can I make sure that the Smart Folder does indeed identify and list the mail messages that I have tagged via Spotlight comment ?
Thanks a lot !
D.V.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Howdy,
I cannot reproduce this problem myself...I see the same results in both the Mail spotlight and the spotlight menu bar item. I'm not sure if after installing 10.5 a new spotlight index is created, but it might be worth a shot to create a fresh index and see if that helps.
I haven't tried this, but it was the easy way I could find to reindex.
Open Spotlight Preferences
In the privacy tab, add the volume you want to reindex
After a few moments, remove that volume from the privacy list
Allow Spotlight to reindex the volume
Please let me know if that works for reindexing.
+R

Leopard's Spotlight doesn't search Mail messages

Leopard's Spotlight isn't searching email messages. I made a clean install of 10.5, and have two POP accounts. The message files are right there under ~/Library/Mail/... . I rebuilt the index for the system volume by adding and then removing the volume from the Privacy zone in Spotlight preferences. I also tried some of the command-line suggestions posted elsewhere for this problem. I recently added my backup volume to the privacy zone, but other than that the zone is empty.
But the problem remains. Outside Mail.app, Spotlight never comes back with search results that are mail messages. Inside Mail.app, searching "entire message" returns 0 results. Does anyone know how to diagnose this problem? Can I see if a particular file is included in the metadata index?

Hahaaaa! Solved it - at least for me...
Please read the whole explanation first before just gabbing any presented commands and executing them in the Terminal. The solution requires no Terminal.
I had exactly the same problem described by MikeW and JJ. I tried everything like you before at no avail, too. But I tried one more thing that did work and indexed all my mail. Here is what I did at the command line. Don't type the command right away. It will work, but this is not the root cause of your problem, I present it just to explain:
find ~/Library/Mail -name "*.emlx" -exec mdimport {} \;
This searches for the individual message (*.emlx) files themselves and throws them one by one onto the mdimporter which imports them just fine. Still, a plain mdimport ~/Library/Mail would not work which pointed me in the right direction: Spotlight did not "see" these individual message files. But Why?
I fiddled a bit with file/folder permissions since I also simply upgraded from Tiger and ended up with old Tiger permission based user accounts. No result. I discovered, that in Finder the mailboxes, say ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/INBOX.mbox etc. were displayed as package files instead of folders. Strange. So again I tried mdimport -d1 ~/Library/Mail now with a bit of debugging. Aha! Spotlight imports this folder as type 'dyn.ah62d4rv4ge81g45mr3wgn8a', or similar, a dynamic UTI, instead of with 'com.apple.mail.mbox' as what it should have been. Since this unknown dynamic UTI dosn't mean anything sensible to Spotlight, it would simply skip the folder, not scanning it's contents with the well known result that mails cannot be searched by content.
So, what is essentially overwriting these UTIs? Especially because this would not happen in another Leopard-created user account. I felt guilty as I added some custom UTIs in the past, but nothing to do with mail at all. So who carries UTIs for Mail.app? Well... Mail.app! Another Mail.app? YES! I remembered, that I had an older complete pre-Spotlight system backup on my current system, including all applications including Mail.app in version 1.3.something. AFAIK only with Mail 2.0 Apple changed the way Mail saves messages and they apparently also changed the UTI of .mbox to the new format. I simply deleted the old version of Mail.app. Immediately after that the icons of the .mbox changed and I could open these folders in Finder. I tried again mdimport ~/Library/Mail and - boom - Spotlight imported all my mails!
Long story to explain my thoughts, here are 5 steps for you to try:
1. Search your system to find out if you have multiple different copies of Mail.app. You can do that with Spotlight/Finder or enter in the terminal:
sudo find / -type d -name "Mail.app" -ls
(You need to be admin to sudo, type your password when prompted)
2. Locate and check the found versions of Mail.app in Finder via the get info window.
3. Delete all but the actual copy of Mail.app in /Applications from your system (empty trash!).
4. Enter the following line in the terminal to have Spotlight import your messages:
mdimport ~/Library/Mail
Should take much longer now, depending on the number of mails you have.
5. Check the result by searching mail content in Mail/Finder/Spotlight, enjoy!
Note: If you did find and delete old versions of Mail.app, but step 4 did not work, you might have to log out and in or you can even try to restart the machine. In my case the result was instant. If all of that did not work for you - sorry - but probably the above helps you to track your particular problem down.
ecke

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.

Spotlight Searches of Encrypted Mail Messages

Greetings,
Is there a way to get Spotlight to search the contents of encrypted mail messages?
I have a number of messages in my Mail folders that have been signed with Digital IDs. Spotlight will not search the contents of these messages (headers and subjects seem to be ok).
I have tried checking the "Encrypted Messages" in preferences and have reindexed the Mail folder with no luck.
Thanks.
Mac OS X (10.4.8)

On the top of my head, I would suggest that you could search for sender, date, etc., in encrypted emails, but as the contents is encrypted, you would need to know the makeup of the encryption. For example, if you were looking for a message with the word "warning", you would have to type in the encryption, e.g., "%r^:&x$' of that word to find it. Otherwise why encrypt the contents in the first place.
If for example, Spotlight could find by contents in an encrypted message, anyone who can intercept you email would be able to read your mail.

I clicked to open one of my mail folders and when it opened, it immediately deleted all of the items in it! Why and can I get them back???

In my email app, I clicked to open one of my mail folders. When it opened, it immediately deleted all of the emails inside that folder. This happened with all the others too. How can I stop this and is it possible to get that mail back.

Did you try to open teh fle by double-clicking its icon? If the file was made with an older version of Office, you may get that message. Try opeing PP and, from its "File" menu, see if you can open the ppt. I've foundthat often gets around that message and then yo ucan save the file from the newer version.
If that doesn't work, consider asking in the Microsoft Office: Mac forums here:
Office for Mac forums
PowerPoint is not an Apple product and it seems a lot of people around here avoid Office.

Lost profile and all mail folders after mac crash

disaster! my mac crashed. when i restarted and opened thunderbird, i was prompted to create an account. ii spent a lot of time on mozilla support--determined that my address book was in tact and tried several things according to other posts including moving the profile. nothing worked. i finally set up a new account, hoping to import the old folders. but now its a mess. i cannot find anything that resembles the old folders, i dont have a back up (i know), and im in over my head.
does anyone have suggestions of how untangle this. or know of support available in nyc. the folders contain years of business emails--i would happily hire someone at this point.

If you are being asked to create a new account you have lost your profile not just the mail folders. Read this article on how to attempt to recover it.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_profile_that_suddenly_disappeared

Just installed new OS (mavericks) and lost mail folders. any advice?

I had set up several mail folders. When I installed the new Mavericks OS they all disappeared. Left with Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash and Junk. Is there a way of recovering the lost folders? Some very important info in them.

I had set up several mail folders. When I installed the new Mavericks OS they all disappeared. Left with Inbox, Sent, Drafts, Trash and Junk. Is there a way of recovering the lost folders? Some very important info in them.

I have an edit button in my e mail account but when I press it I don't get the ''get new mailbox' button. How can I create e mail folders? Thanks.

I want to create e mail folders for my goole account. I go to the account and as suggested in the forum i tap on edit. Then instead of getting at the botton a button that says 'new mailbox' i get 2 boxes one red that says delete and one blue that says move. This is on an ipad 2. I have also an ipad 3 and there it does work. I have checked the settings in both ipads and they seem identical to me.
How can I create the foldesr then on teh ipad 2?
Thanks a lot!

You need to be in the mailbox list for the account when you tap edit.
Sounds like you might be trying to do it from insider you Inbox.
Matt

How can I backup my e-mail folders to an alternate location?

I would like to be able to make a copy of my e-mail folders. I could then use these folders to restore my e-mails in case of a system crash. They only thing I have been able to determine that they seem to be in a folder AppData under my login name. But the folder seems to be hidden or something because it does not show up. How can I access them and make a copy. Furthermore, how can I copy them back in case of a recovery?

There is an add-on to TB which allows import and export of emails in various formats to a separate storage medium (external disk, thumb drive, etc.).
The instructions on how to download and install it can be found at http://barryduggan.info/exportMail.php

Move mail folders from one mac to another

How to move my mail folders from one mac to another.
The foldera re on my mac. See below the attached image.

Some possible options in no particular order:
(1) Copy the folders to a SUB Thumb Drive.
(2) Use Dropbox
(3) If your Macs are compatible with AirDrop see list:
MacBook Pro (Late 2008 or newer)
MacBook Air (Late 2010 or newer)
MacBook (Late 2008 or newer)
iMac (Early 2009 or newer)
Mac Mini (Mid 2010 or newer)
Mac Pro (Early 2009 with AirPort Extreme card, or Mid 2010)
Activate AirDrop on both Macs to Move/Copy your Mail Folders.

Cannot open your default e-mail folders. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize your folders with your Outlook data file (.ost)

Fresh installation of Exchange Server 2013 on Windows Server 2012.
Our first test account cannot access their email via Outlook but can access fine through OWA. The following message appears - "Cannot open your default e-mail folders. You must connect to Microsoft Exchange with the current profile before you can synchronize
your folders with your Outlook data file (.ost)" is displayed.
If I turn off cached Exchange mode, setting the email account to not
cache does not resolve the issue and i get a new error message - "Cannot open your default e-mail folders. The file (path\profile name).ost is not an Outlook data file (.ost). Very odd since it creates its own .ost file when you run it for the first
time.
I cleared the appdata local Outlook folder and I tested on a new laptop that has never connected to Outlook, same error message on any system.
Microsoft Exchange RPC Client Access service is running.
No warning, error or critical messages in the eventlog, it's like the healthiest server alive.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. I haven't encountered this issue with previous versions of Exchange.

So it looks like a lot of people are having this issue and seeing how Exchange 2013 is still new (relatively to the world) there isn't much data around to answer this. I've spend ALOT of time trying to figure this out.
Here is the answer. :) - No I don't know all but I'm going to try to give you the most reasonable answer to this issue, in a most logical way.
First thing I did when I was troubleshooting this issue is that I ignored Martina Miskovic's suggestion for Step4 http://technet.microsoft.com/library/jj218640(EXCHG.150)because it didn't make sense to me because I was trying to connect
Outlook not outside the LAN but actually inside. However, Martina's suggestion does fix the issue if it's applied in the correct context.
This is where the plot thickens (it's stew). She failed to mention that things like SSL (which I configure practically useless - anyone who ever worked in a business environment where the owner pretty much trusts anyone in the company, otherwise they don't
work there - very good business practice in my eyes btw, can confirm that...) are some sort of fetish with Microsoft lately. Exchange 2013 was no exception.
In exchange 2003, exchange 2007 and exchange 2010 - you could install it and then go to outlook and set it up. And when outlook manual Microsoft Exchange profile would ask you for server name, you would give it and give the name of the person who you setting
up - as long as machine is on the domain, not much more is needed. IT JUST WORKS! :) What a concept, if the person already on premises of the business - GIVE HIM ACCESS. I guess that was too logical for Microsoft. Now if you're off premises you can use things
like OutlookAnywhere - which I might add had their place under that scenario.
In Exchange 2013, the world changed. Ofcourse Microsoft doesn't feel like telling it in a plain english to people - I'm sure there is an article somewhere but I didn't find it. Exchange 2013 does not support direct configuration of Outlook like all of it's
previous versions. Did you jaw drop? Mine did when I realized it. So now when you are asked for your server name in manual outlook set up and you give it Exchange2013.yourdomain.local - it says cannot connect to it. This happens because ALL - INTERNAL AND
EXTERNAL connection are now handled via OutlookAnywhere. You can't even disable that feature and have it function the reasonable way.
So now the question still remains - how do you configure outlook. Well under server properties there is this nice section called Outlook anywhere. You have a chance to configure it's External and Internal address. This is another thing that should be logical
but it didn't work that way for me. When I configured the external address different from the internal - it didn't work. So I strongly suggest you get it working with the same internal address first and then ponder how you want to make it work for the outside
users.
Now that you have this set up you have to go to virtual directories and configure the external and internal address there - this is actually what the Step 4 that Martina was refering to has you do.
Both external and internal address are now the same and you think you can configure your outlook manually - think again. One of the most lovely features of Outlook Anywhere, and the reason why I had never used it in the past is that it requires a TRUSTED
certificate.
See so it's not that exchange 2013 requires a trusted certificate - it's that exchange 2013 lacks the feature that was there since Windows 2000 and Exchange 5.5.
So it's time for you to install an Active Direction Certificate Authority. Refer to this wonderful article for exact steps - http://careexchange.in/how-to-install-certificate-authority-on-windows-server-2012/
Now even after you do that - it won't work because you have to add the base private key certificate, which you can download now from your internal certsrv site, to Default Domain Policy (AND yes some people claim NEVER mess with the Default Domain Policy,
always make an addition one... it's up to you - I don't see direct harm if you know what you want to accomplish) see this: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc738131%28v=ws.10%29.aspx if you want to know exact steps.
This is the moment of ZEN! :) Do you feel the excitement? After all it is your first time. Before we get too excited lets first request and then install the certificate to actual Exchange via the gui and assign it to all the services you can (IIS, SMTP and
there is a 3rd - I forgot, but you get the idea).
Now go to your client machine where you have the outlook open, browse to your exchange server via https://exchang2013/ in IE and if you don't get any certificate errors - it's good. If you do run on hte client and the server: gpupdate /force This will refresh
the policy. Don't try to manually install the certificate from Exchange's website on the client. If you wanna do something manually to it to the base certificate from the private key but if you added it to the domain policy you shouldn't have to do it.
Basically the idea is to make sure you have CA and that CA allows you to browse to exchange and you get no cert error and you can look at the cert and see that's from a domain CA.
NOW, you can configure your outlook. EASY grasshoppa - not the manual way. WHY? Cause the automatic way will now work. :) Let it discover that exachange and populate it all - and tell you I'm happy! :)
Open Outlook - BOOM! It works... Was it as good for you as it was for me?
You may ask, why can't I just configure it by manual - you CAN. It's just a nightmare. Go ahead and open the settings of the account that got auto configed... How do you like that server name? It should read something like [email protected]
and if you go to advanced and then connection tab - you'll see Outlook Anywhere is checked as well. Look at the settings - there is the name of the server, FQDN I might add. It's there in 2 places and one has that Mtdd-something:Exchange2013.yourdomain.local.
So what is that GUID in the server name and where does it come from. It's the identity of the user's mailbox so for every user that setting will be different but you can figure it out via the console on the Exchange server itself - if you wish.
Also a note, if your SSL certs have any trouble - it will just act like outlook can't connect to the exchange server even though it just declines the connection cause the cert/cert authority is not trusted.
So in short Outlook Anywhere is EVERYWHERE! And it has barely any gui or config and you just supposed to magically know that kind of generic error messages mean what... Server names are now GUIDs of the [email protected] - THAT MAKES PERFECT
SENSE MICROSOFT! ...and you have to manage certs... and the only place where you gonna find the name of the server is inside the d*** Outlook Anywhere settings in the config tab, un it's own config button - CAN WE PUT THE CONFIG ANY FURTHER!
Frustrating beyond reason - that should be Exchange's new slogan...
Hope this will help people in the future and won't get delete because it's bad PR for Microsoft.
PS
ALSO if you want to pick a fight with me about how SSL is more secure... I don't wanna hear it - go somewhere else...

Is there a way to "select all" in the mail folders?

I was wondering if there is a "select all" function in the mail folders on the iPad 2 pr iPhone 4s?
I added an email account to my iPad and it is now in the process of downloading 3,500 old messages that were on the server 50 at a time and I have to go through and select each one with the edit option to delete them in batches.

No way to do that yet,

How do I restore my archived mail folders after downloading Yosemite

After downloading Yosemite, all my archived mail folders have disappeared - can someone please help me, I really need to get this information back?

Do you have a backup?
Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library. Then Mail/V2/Mailboxes

Spotlight constantly thrashing on mail folders

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