Undo a Mail Rebuild.

How can I undo a Mail Rebuild. I accidentally hit the Rebuild, now have no mail, and want to restore my messages.

It shouldn't delete your messages, but it does. Or at least it hides them. They instantly vanish. Another thread on this subject said to hit "rebuild" again. That just erases/hides everything again. If you hit "Get All New Mail" tab, it seems (this time) to have restored my Inbox, although not all of my Sent mail.

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How to undo Mail Rebuild.

O.K. I did it one more time by blindly following leads to solve a problem with my mail
When starting Mail I -was able to- read the messages in my inbox. After awhile they disappear giving me a msg where normally the email body is read: "The message from Wayne Mallett <[email protected]> concerning “Mail Subject” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."
So I looked online here :
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=29787
and followed the following link from one of the postings:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25812
And did a mail rebuild .
All the files in my in-box disappreared.
I quit and restarted mail and it did someindexing and total files in inbox now is zero ( + a couple of new emails), and thousands of mails in my inbox seem to be gone.
Is there any way that I can undo this rebuild and get the files in the inbox back?
Someone please help!

As you can see, letting a mailbox grow indefinitely is a really bad idea. If you’re just starting to experience the problem, doing what the Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty article suggests might work. If you’ve let the problem to become worse over time, however, it may be too late to solve it as described in the article, but you may still be able to fix it as follows:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. Assuming this is a POP account, in the Finder go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/.
3. Locate INBOX.mbox and move it to the Desktop.
4. Open Mail. A new empty INBOX.mbox will automatically be created within the account folder, and this will allow you to continue using Mail normally while trying to solve the problem.
Although INBOX.mbox appears to be a file, it’s actually a special kind of folder (a package) that contains several files. Ctrl-click on INBOX.mbox and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu to see the files it contains. Of these files, mbox is the most important and is where all your messages are stored. What’s the size of that file? Depending on its size, you may or may not be able to directly import it back into Mail in the next step.
An Incoming_Mail file may also be present, in which case it might contain messages that Mail couldn’t transfer to mbox. Incoming_Mail is also a standard mbox file like mbox proper, just named differently, and can be imported back into Mail in the same way.
5. In Mail, do File > Import Mailboxes and follow the instructions to import the INBOX.mbox that’s on the Desktop. I’m not sure what the import options available in Mail 1.x are, but you should choose Other / Standard mbox or something like that, so that Mail looks at the mbox file only (and Incoming_Mail, if present) and ignores the other files in the package.
If Mail doesn’t let you select INBOX.mbox in step 5 because it’s a package instead of a plain folder, rename INBOX.mbox to just INBOX (i.e. remove the .mbox suffix) so that it becomes a normal folder, and try again. You cannot do this directly in the Finder because removing a suffix by normal means causes the Finder to hide the suffix instead of renaming the file. To remove the suffix from the name, you must do File > Get Info (⌘I) on the file and change the name there.
If the mbox file is too big for Mail to handle it, however, you’ll have to break it into smaller pieces. You can do that with an MBOX Breaker Script available at Allan Sampson’s website, or with Emailchemy. The former will ignore the Incoming_Mail file that I mentioned previously, but you may try importing that file directly if it’s not too big or just ignore it if all your messages are in mbox. Also, if you removed the .mbox suffix from the name of the mailbox, you may need to add it back again for the script to recognize it.
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. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.

Mail rebuild mailbox issue with Gmail

I set up Mail 4.6 to receive and send e-mails to and from Gmail as per the instructions on the Gmail site and used additional information on this forum.
What is happening is whenever I rebuild the gmail folder it downloads again all the files I have deleated. I rebuild after deleting a lot of Spam and e-mails I no longer need.
As recommended the account is set as a imap account.
Under the mailbox tab it is set:
DRAFTS: Store draft messages on server - box not checked
SENT: Store sent messages on server - box not checked
           Delete message: dropdown set to: One day old
JUNK: Store Junk messages on server - box not checked
          Delete message: dropdown set to: One day old
TRASH: Move deleted message to the Trash mailbox - box is checked
             Store deleted messages on the server: - box not checked
             Permanently erase Delete message when: dropdown set to: One day old
Under the Advance tab it is set:
Enable this account - box is checked
Include when automatically checking for new messages - box is checked
Compact mailboxes Automatically - is greyed out - box is checked
Keep copies of messages for offline viewing: dropdown set to: All messages and their attachments
I am not sure is this last item of 'Keep copies of messages for offline viewing' refers to the the Gmail server or the mail box - if it is the gmail server then I guess Mail is just syncronising with this; thus any mails I delete will be down loaded again. ((All the other mail servers I use I set under Advance tab to 'Remove copy from server after retrieving message' - but this option is not shown for gmail.
Two things are happening:
a) When I delete files in the Mail, Gmail folder the next time I rebuild the mail box I get 1000 + emails down loaded; even though I may only have deleted 30 or so.
b) At other time mail will show downloading e-mails in the blue download indicator, but no new emails appear.
Would welcome some direction on how to resolve these issues; thank you.

The issue with g-mail became cronic. Now I can't delete e-mails received to my gmail account.
When I try to delete emails in the gMail or Mail inbox the following message is show.
The Message could not be removed to the mailbox (null)
The destination mailbox "(null)" does not allow messages to be moved to it.
This started after following the recomendation I found in the forum to sync gmail folders to the Mail - folders.
I am looking for solution to get back to the original condition that while not what it should be it is better than now.
Was hoping for solution were I wouldn't have to delete gmail account from mail then start again.
Any ideas welcome as I would like to delete emails in the gmail folders in Gmail without logging into Gmail every time.
Thank you

Mac Mail - rebuild address book

I've replaced the disk drive in my daughter's MacBook after a total disk crash and reinstalled OSX etc.
She had quite a lot of stuff backed up, but not her MacMail address book.
Fortunately our ISP has kept nearly 3000 emails she sent via webmail (when she didn't have the MacBook with her) over the past 2 years.
Reinstating the email account, we have downloaded all the folders from the ISP.
There are now 2 "Sent" folders. One, created by MacMail with the paper aeroplane icon, contains the emails she has sent since the crash, the other, with an ordinary "folder" icon contains the 3000 recovered emails from the ISP server.
We can add the sent email addresses from the MacMail "Sent" folder to the address book via "smart addresses" and "previous recipients", but this is only a few.
I then tried selecting the ISP "Sent" folder and told MacMail to use this as its "Sent". Sure enough the two folders swapped icons, but "smart addresses" and "previous recipients" still only knew about the few emails in the original MacMail "Sent" folder, they don't pick up the 3000 or so.
1) Can I make SA and PR recognise these emails?
2) Failing that, could I copy or cut and paste the 3000 emails from one folder to the other and get it to work? I don't really want to do this but I will if it's the only way.
3) Is there any way of similarly trawling through the received emails (of which there are over 1000 we've managed to recover) and extracting the senders' addresses into the address book?
We could identify each unique email in both folders and, with smart addressing turned on, add them to the address book one at a time, but this would be a long and tedious process.

I then tried selecting the ISP "Sent" folder and told MacMail to use this as its "Sent".
Is this a POP or IMAP account? Who is the email provider?
1) Can I make SA and PR recognise these emails?
What exactly is 'SA' and 'PR'?
2) Failing that, could I copy or cut and paste the 3000 emails from one folder to the other and get it to work?
Maybe. You would only need to move them all at once from one folder to the other; copying them to the other folder would create an additional problem. But you may also need to rebuild your Mail index before they would be recognized.
3) Is there any way of similarly trawling through the received emails (of which there are over 1000 we've managed to recover) and extracting the senders' addresses into the address book?
Yes. Check out this Contextual Menu plugin Mail CM (free trial, but very low cost so there's no point in not paying for it).
Mulder

Undoing twin Mail account?

I was having trouble downloading messages from my university pop account after recently switching to a new machine and stupidly decided to create a new account with a different label but the same settings to see if there was some hidden problem.
When activated the new account started competing with the old one with neither working properly. When I tried to delete the new account I also lost all of the messages in the inbox from the old one. I was able to 'rebuild' the original account inbox once, but after I closed Mail and reopened it they seemed to be lost.
I do have a relatively recent time machine backup, so all will hopefully not be lost. But before messing things up any further I need some advice on how to get rid of the twin account without doing any unnecessary damage, and maybe how to proceed from there.
Thanks!

Hello Kenfromsk and MangoN,
I have managed to resolve the problem of not being able to received my AOL e-mail via Lion Mail.
It was quite drastic action so please save any e-mails that you have on the Mac rather on the e-mail server. All of mine are on AOL's server.
The solution I found was. Firstly shut down Mail then via Go to Home (in the drop down menu) then Library and find the Mail folder.
Deleted all the files within the Mail Folder that related to your e-mail provider, in my case AOL. Do not delete the Mail folder itself.
Once you have done this re-launch Mail and let the mail assistant take you through re-establishing your e-mail account.
It worked for me and I hope it does for you. Please let me know how you get on.
Best Regards,
Maurice 49.

Mail rebuild

I'm having an issue with mail that has been getting progressively worse. The emails that I'm receiving through my iCloud account appear correctly when I open them from the message view column. However, mail randomnly changes the sender name and details of that sender in the message view column only. If I choose that message and open it up, it still appears as normal with the correct sender name and details. If I reply to the sender when the message is highlighted in the message view column then it replies to the incorrect address. What's more confusing is that I selected "rebuild" and it temporarily fixed the problem but now (48 hours later) it's reoccurring. I'm lost and there are no forums I've found that address this issue. Any thoughts?
So mail comes in as [email protected] in message viewer. I select it and open it up and it may or may not be from [email protected] It may be from [email protected] If I choose to reply to the open message it goes to the correct sender. If I reply having just selected the message in the message view column then it goes to the randomnly changed address.

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 the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope Index
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard (command-C). In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder
from the menu bar. Paste into the box that opens (command-V), then press return.
A Finder window will open with a file selected. Move the selected file to the Desktop, leaving the window open. Other files in the folder may have names that begin with "Envelope Index". Move those files, if any, to the Trash.
Log out and log back in. Relaunch Mail. It should prompt you to re-import your messages. You may get a warning that the index is corrupt and that Mail has to quit. Click OK.
Test. If Mail now works as expected, you can delete the file you moved to the Desktop. Otherwise, post your results.

Mac mail rebuild mailbox interruption

In an effort to integrate my emails from a previous installation into my current installation, I imported emails.
I then tried to rebuild the mail box in order to get the search to work properly.
Did not realize that I had run out of disk space, so I had to force quit, and then try again.
as a result, I have two "Data_Rebuild-n" folders along with my original "Data" folder.
What does the rebuild process do and in what sequence?
Is all my data spread over the three existing folders?
How can I recover and successfully rebuild (now that I have enough drive space)?
I search for answers, but have not been able to find an so far.
any suggestions?
Thanks, in advance.
J

The issue with g-mail became cronic. Now I can't delete e-mails received to my gmail account.
When I try to delete emails in the gMail or Mail inbox the following message is show.
The Message could not be removed to the mailbox (null)
The destination mailbox "(null)" does not allow messages to be moved to it.
This started after following the recomendation I found in the forum to sync gmail folders to the Mail - folders.
I am looking for solution to get back to the original condition that while not what it should be it is better than now.
Was hoping for solution were I wouldn't have to delete gmail account from mail then start again.
Any ideas welcome as I would like to delete emails in the gmail folders in Gmail without logging into Gmail every time.
Thank you

Mailboxes disappeared in mail - rebuild not an option

My mailboxes (http mail account) disappeared after doing some automatic software updates yesterday and restarting as directed. Rebuild is grayed, so I don't think it's an option.

Oy, I feel dumb. Somehow an httpmail account mailbox icon appeared with all of my mailboxes under it. It did not look this way before. Do you have any idea why it changed? Doesn't really matter, since the mailboxes are all there (THANKS). I just don't know why mail seems to have rearranged my mailboxes that way and apparently on its own.

Mail Rebuild=Missing Messages

Yes I know, outdated tech. But I use a Powermac G4 for my email. I am running OS X 10.3.9.
Recently, all my emails in one box, that had 6000 emails in it approximately, were showing, can not display, must connect to server to read errors, and wouldn't let me transfer them to other mailboxes. However, I have my email set to pull down all the email off the server when it retrieves it so I know that it's on the computer, and no longer on my server (TWC, they don't allow much space). SO the error was incorrect, it just wasn't showing them for some reason.
SO I did a rebuild. As soon as I did it all my emails dissappeared. Not a sigle one was left- in that mailbox folder. Every other one was ok.
Upon some internet advice I went, found the mailbox and inspected it to see it's size. It's 1.7 gigs, so I am assuming that all the data is still there.
The question is, how do I get hte messages to show up again in Mail? This has been crazy frustrating and nothing I seem to do works. Including moving the Mail folder out of the licrary and those sorts of things. I haven't moved any plist stuff yet as that seemed chancy.
Help!

Note, hard drives should never get over 85% full. So only do this advice if you are sure you won't exceed that limit.
Assuming you have more than enough space to make this happen, I would use the Finder after Mail has been quit to Duplicate the 1.7 GB folder and put the extra copy on the Desktop. Use Mail's Import command to import the contents of that folder.

Apple Mail Application and Yahoo! Mail -- Rebuilds Constantly

Hi.
I am using the Apple Mac Mail client on my iMac and MBPR and connecting via IMAP to two different mail providers. One mail provider works perfectly.   Unfortunately, my Yahoo! mail box is very inconsistent in it's behaviour.
1. Many times I try to delete a message and it comes back with an error message saying that the mesage can't be deleted.   I go and try a little later and it works.
2. Probably even more annoying, is that it seems to get out of sync and has to rebuild the folder structure and download the entire mailbox from the server very frequently.   Yes, I do have many folders and some are big with 1000s of messages.   Is there a limit here, a known problem, or what.
Very frustrating not to have a seamless experience with the mail client and Yahoo!
Anyone have any insight into either of these issues.
Thanks.

No insight, but I have the same problem with Mail.app (Mountain Lion) failing to stay in sync with my AT&T/Yahoo IMAP account. Very annoying. Makes Smart Mailboxes useless. I must constantly resync manually. I have no such problem with my old MobileMe account on iCloud.
I gave Apple some Mail feedback about this. I have no idea whether it is an Apple or AT&T/Yahoo problem.

Mail Rebuilds Infinitely

My mailbox was corrupted and had to be rebuilt. Bizarrely, it rebuilt more messages than possible. "Imported x of y messages," but x > y. The time remaining was in the millions of hours.
What happened, and how can I stop it from happening again? Mail and Safari have been completely unstable since upgrading to Mountain Lion, crashing at least once per day, and this is the latest manifestation. It's incredibly frustrating.
Jeremy

You've posted this in the iPod forum, you are more likely to get an answer to this particular question if you post it in the Mail and Address Book forum. You'll find it at this link: Discussions - Mail and Address Book

How to undo bulk mail tag?

Some things have gone into my iphone 4S bulk mail folder and I'm wondering how to fix it so they never do again. I've moved messages to the inbox, but the next time one comes in with that address, it goes to bulk. Does anybody know how to fix that?

Geez another yahoo issue. The spam on my phone showing in the "bulk" folder is different than on the desktop. This has gotten so bad with yahoo. I'm working on moving off of yahoo completely as it's been nothing but a disaster for over a year.

Mail regularly asks to rebuild the database

For the past couple months, a few times each week, Mail throws up a window saying that Mail has to quit and rebuild the mail list (or database.. I can't remember the exact wording). So I quit it and click the rebuild button and Mail rebuilds the 40,000 messages. This takes about 5 minutes each time.
Is there a way to either debug the existing emails, or just start over some how? I'd bet money that this isn't happening to everyone that uses Mail.

Hi all.
I have the same trouble, I did as Mulder says, it not helps.
Then I kill all the folder /Users/user1/Library/Mail and /Users/user/Library/Mail Downloads, after that I kill the files /var/spool/imap/user/user1/cyrus.* on mailserver, then restart mailserver, then in ServerAdmin utility in Mail/Maintenanse I find user1 and press button "Reconstruct". It rebuilds the cyrus.* files. Then I start Mail on user's1 computer, it wants me to create mail account, I do it.
Then it syncing all user's1 mail, and all is OK, BUT!!! All letters have the same receive data!!! (13.08.2008)
I think that the main mail DB corrupted, however is there any method to fix it?

'Undo Command' in Yosimite Mail

Why is there no 'Undo' command under 'Edit' to 'Undo' accidental mail deletions in Mac Mail?

It's back. Must've been a glitch that decided to disappear... Is Microsoft writing code with Apple these days? LOL

Trying to rebuild mail, is it normal for it to continue for over 3 hours

How long should it take to rebuild mail, going for 3+ hours already

It finished after about 4 hours, this is my first mail rebuild.

Undo a Mail Rebuild.

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