Urgent! Help! Mail wants to import all my messages!

For some reason, Mail just quit. WHen I restart, it says it needs to "import all your messages. This may take a few minutes." My mail is an IMAP account synced with Gmail and it contains over a hundred thousand messages. This happened once before and if I remember rightly it took not minutes but A DAY AND A HALF to import my messages.
Can they really all have been deleted? WHy would it suddenly need to import messages that I never deleted? I do all my business through Mail, I can't have this happening. Surely there's a way to find that the messages are still there?
Does anyone know how to fix this?

It's caused by a corrupt index file that has to be rebuilt. If this is happening repeatedly, you may have some corrupt messages, or you may have installed a third-party system modification that interferes with Mail.
Back up all data.
1. Triple-click the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Mail/Bundles
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
Services ▹ Open
from the contextual menu. A folder may open, or you may get an error message that the item can't be found. Either result is normal. If the folder does open and has contents, move the contents to the Desktop. Relaunch Mail and test. If there's no change, put the contents of the folder back and quit Mail again.
2. Repeat with this line:
/Library/Mail/Bundles
This time you may be prompted for your login password when you remove the items. Make sure they're removed from the folder and not just copied to the Desktop. If necessary, copy them first and then move the originals to the Trash.

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Mail wants to re-download 1500 messages from my POP server

I tried the delete the "MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2" file trick and it's not working... (I don't know why there's a number 2 at the end"
Everything's been fine with me and Mail.app for the few weeks I've been using it. Last week, however, I noticed that Mail could no longer tell me which messages had been Removed From my Machine (in order to delete them from the server).
Now, Mail wants to download all 1500 messages from my POP server. I noticed this only by accident in the Activity Viewer.
How can I slap Mail and tell it to only download previously un-downloaded messages?
Thanks!
Dual 2.3 G5 Mac OS X (10.4.3) Mail v2.0.5 (746/746.2)

I tried the delete the "MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2"
file trick and it's not working...
What does "it's not working" mean? It seems to me that it's working pretty well. You deleted it, and now Mail downloads everything still on the server again, which is exactly what deleting that file accomplishes...
I don't know why there's a number 2 at the end
Because Mail 2.0 uses a different file than what Mail 1.x used. It was called MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded (without the 2) in Mail 1.x.
Everything's been fine with me and Mail.app for the
few weeks I've been using it. Last week, however, I
noticed that Mail could no longer tell me which
messages had been Removed From my Machine (in order
to delete them from the server).
I don't understand what you mean here.
How can I slap Mail and tell it to only download
previously un-downloaded messages?
By restoring the MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2 file that you deleted previously.
Alternatively, you can choose Get Info (⌘I) from the Action menu located below the list of mailboxes in the main Mail window to open the Account Info window -- type "Account Info" in the search field of Mail Help for more information on this feature. This allows you to selectively remove any messages from the server without having to download them.

When I'm travelling I import photos onto my laptop's external hard drive and work on the images using virtual copies to develop them. When I get home, I want to import all the photos together with the developed virtual copies fromt the laptop's external H

When I'm travelling I import photos onto my laptop's external hard drive and work on the images using virtual copies to develop them. When I get home, I want to import all the photos together with the developed virtual copies fromt the laptop's external HD into LR5 on my PC desktop. But if I use the import button in LR I only get the original photo, not the developed copies. What am I doing wrong?

Since your current editing workflow is based around Virtual Copies there are no actual files containing the edit data. Therefore, you'll need to use the 'Import from another catalog' option ( see File menu).

I need URGENT help, My company just changed all our iphones to Samsung Notes and i am now unable to get ANY messages from current iphone friends and colleagues colleagues.... This is certainly unfair and inconvenient.... Once loved apple not so much now

I need URGENT help, My company just changed all our iphones to Samsung Notes and i am now unable to get ANY messages from current iphone friends and colleagues colleagues.... This is certainly unfair and inconvenient.... Once loved apple not so much now

Go to: https://supportprofile.apple.com/MySupportProfile.do
Log in if not already logged in.
Click on "Edit Products"
Click on the "X" to the right of the product.
Click "Unregister".
If that doesn't work, you're going to need to call AppleCare and have them remove your phone from the system.
Best of luck.

Mail won't import all Entourage mail-- any ideas?

Hello all,
I started to import my mail from Entourage. Everything went in pretty much fine, except for the SENT folder. It would import, and then when I looked, it was all Sent mail but only up to Oct 18,2008. I then deleted that "Import/Sent" mailbox in Mail.app, then tried to Import again, just checking the "Sent Mail" box when it asks you "which items do you want to import from Entourage", etc...
But still, it would import a huge sent-mail folder, but lacking emails from Oct 18-Dec 10 2008.
Any thoughts on why? Any suggestions on how to just get those SPECIFIC emails from Entourage and put them directly into Mail.app? Is there any way to get those specific ICS files from Entourage and convert them into Mail?
Thanks- Samantha

cjpsullivan wrote:
Why won't iTunes 11 import CD'S
It does.

Help: iTunes wants to delete all my music and videos off of my iPhone!

I usually keep the option to manually manage music and videos on my iPhone. I only use 1 pc to transfer music and movies to and from my iPhone. Recently for some reason when I launched iTunes, an error message kept poping up repeatedly saying "The iTunes Library file cannot be saved." I fixed the error message by adjusting the user access privileges to my music folder.
Now my music library is completely empty in iTunes, but that shouldn't be a problem because I manually manage my music and videos. However, when I checked the iPhone page in iTunes, the checkbox for manually manage music and videos is unchecked.
So I went to go check the check box so that I can continue to add some more music and videos to my iPhone, however a message box pops up saying:
"The iPhone "my iPhone" is synced with another iTunes library. Do you want to erase this iPhone and sync with this iTunes library?"
I have about 12 gigs worth of music and videos which I have carefully hand picked over a period of about 3 months and now iTunes wants to delete all of it because it thinks I want to "sync with another library". I only hope someone can understand how frustrating this is for me. All I want to do is continue to be able to add music and videos to my iPhone without having to erase months worth of work putting the current music I have on there. Can anyone help me?

Thanks for your reply. I don't keep all of my music in the iTunes' designated music folder. I don't like the way iTunes reorganizes my songs and I keep all my music in my own self organized music folders as I don't use iTunes as my primary media application. Not to mention allot of my files come from all different corners of my computer's hard drive. It would literally take months to go through over 20 gigs of media files to pick out the songs I have in my iPhone library to rebuild an iTunes library. Like i said, I don't even use iTunes other than to transfer files to my iPhone. I thought the purpose of manually managing the files was so you don't have to sync it with the iTunes library but now it won't give my that option without requiring me to delete everything on my phone I worked so hard on.
What I don't understand is logically or technically why iTunes HAS to delete all the content off of my iphone. Who's decision in the Apple's software engineering department was to require the one's iPhone to be erased if someone loses their iTunes library? Its frustrating because it makes no sense and I feel as if the software is punishing me for reasons I don't understand by threatening to delete all my content off my phone. Is there absolutely no way to transfer my music to my iPhone without deleting everything currently on and completely rebuilding my music library from scratch?

Mail 2.0.5 - all my messages are missing after marking as read!!!

Ok Mail has worked more or less fine for me after upgrading from 10.3.9 to 10.4.3..until a few minutes ago when I decided to mark all the unread messages in my inbox as read. I hadn't read quite a few, so instead of going and clicking on each one, I just selected all, right clicked, and chose Mark as Read. Suddenly they all disappeared, all but a few. I have two inboxes, one on my ISP, and one .mac. Disk Utility says the hard disk is fine, so I rebuilt both inboxes, and now my ISP inbox still just shows a few emails (appears to be the emails I've received since upgrading to Tiger, only a few days' worth), and my .mac inbox now shows about a years' worth of emails...but I know I have more than that, since I've had the .mac account for 2-3 years or so. Also next to the .mac inbox there is some sort of a progress icon (a pie gradually filling in). If I hover the mouse over the .mac account, it says "Contents stored on server. Name on server: INBOX". Which doesn't make sense, since I have always had Mail download the mail from both my accounts, deleting from server after downloading. If I get info on my ISP inbox, it displays "Account Info", and under the Show Messages on POP server, it shows a bunch of messages from about a year ago. But if I pulldown the menu and instead of showing "all messages on POP server" I choose either of the other options ("items downloaded to my Mac" or "items removed from my Mac"), the list is exactly the same.
My mail appears to be still on my hard drive, since getting info on the various mailbox folders in ~/Library/Mail/ shows about the right amounts of data. I don't want to lose over 300MB (at least 5 years worth) of email....anyone know what could have happened, and more importantly how to fix it?? Thanks!

Ok after thoroughly searching previous threads about similar problems (existing messages not being displayed by Mail 2.x.x), it appears the 10.4 Archive and Install didn't completely convert the mbox file from my ISP email, since there were only a few emlx files (but there are hundreds of emails in the mbox)...so I had to resort to reimporting it manually. Not sure what happened though to make Mail see all the messages for a few days after installing 10.4.3; there was no error message during the system install, and all I did that prompted all my messages to disappear was to mark all as read...
As far as the .mac goes, I have no clue where those emails went...I discovered that somewhere along the line my mbox file for .mac account got corrupt...but nothing over a year old is even on the server, which is odd. Those messages apparently are forever lost. Add me to the statistics of why it's important to back up. :/

Tiger upgrade of mail tries to import non existant messages

On my G5 17" iMac, I've upgraded from Panther to Tiger. I can't upgrade to 10.5 because I need some OS 9 aps. The first time I open Mail in Tiger, it wants to import my 2 imap accounts. It is trying to import messages I've deleted and cleared. I synced the mail accounts on another computer and the imap account shows there are less than 2000 messages. Mail is trying to import 12k and gets hung up around 2.6k. I wants 5 hours to do the import. I tried restarting the computer. I re-synced the mail accounts and mail rules. And the thing still wants to import messages that I've cleared from the imap server.
Ideas?
Thanks.

The conversion from Mail 1.x to Mail 2.x is broken, but it isn’t clear what the problem really is nor what it really is that Mail is trying to import in your case. I’d set up Mail again from scratch and manually import back afterwards any messages you may have stored in local mailboxes, as follows:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/. Move (not copy) the entire Mail folder out of there, to the Desktop.
3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate com.apple.mail.plist and move it to the Desktop.
4. Open Mail and set it up again from scratch. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don’t. Just enter the account information and check that everything works fine.
5. You’ll have to re-configure your Mail > Preferences settings. 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.
6. If Mail works fine now and you had any messages stored in local mailboxes, do File > Import Mailboxes and follow the instructions to import your mail from the old Mail folder that’s now on the Desktop. Import the Mailboxes folder first, then each of the POP-username@mailserver account folders, if any.
There are two ways to import Mail 1.x mailboxes into Mail 2.x. The obvious one is importing them as Mail for Mac OS X. But Mail 1.x stored mail in standard mbox format plus some additional support files, and this allows Mail 1.x mailboxes to also be imported as Other, i.e. as generic mailboxes in standard mbox format.
Importing as Mail for Mac OS X produces the best results when it works, because it takes into consideration all the files in the mailboxes, not just the mbox files where the messages are stored, and hence, allows information such as status flags to be preserved. Importing as Other, on the other hand, may work in cases where importing as Mail for Mac OS X doesn’t, because it looks at the mbox files only, ignoring the support files which is what Mail 2.x usually chokes on, but precisely because of that, information such as status flags is lost and previously deleted messages may reappear.
Hence, you may try importing as much as you can as Mail for Mac OS X, then import the problematic mailboxes as Other.
Note that what Mail asks for when importing depends on the format chosen. Mail always asks for the folder that contains the “things” to be imported. If Mail for Mac OS X is chosen as the data format, the “things” to be imported are the .mbox folders, so you must choose the folder that contains them, not the .mbox folders themselves. On the other hand, if Other is chosen as the data format, the “things” to be imported are the mbox files, so choosing the .mbox folders would work in that case.
As a result of doing the above, some messages may be duplicated. Andreas Amann’s Mail Scripts has a Remove Duplicates script that you may find useful.
Do with the imported mail whatever you wish. You may move the messages to other mailboxes and get rid of the imported mailboxes afterwards if you want.
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. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the folder path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the folder path there.

Mail decides to download all my messages again

Can anyone tell me why mail all of a sudden decides it wants to download all my mail messages again from the server even though I have already downloaded them once. I have several macs and want to download the messages on all machines but not repeated on the same machine. I have mail to delete from the server after 1 week.

It looks like Mail is failing to remove messages from the server according to your settings and/or losing track of which messages have already been downloaded, thus downloading them again. Did you change those settings recently?
Try to remove from the server all the messages that have already been downloaded by clicking the Remove now button in Preferences > Accounts > Advanced -- check for new mail first, just in case there is something amiss and that function doesn’t work as expected.
If Remove now fails to remove the messages from the server, you may try to do so manually using the Account Info window. In order to use that feature, choose Get Info (⌘I) from the Action menu (gear icon) located below the mailboxes list in the main Mail window. You may also try to remove the messages from the server by other means, such as webmail, if the account allows it.

Why does my mail doesn't receive all my messages?

I use my mail app (max OS X snow leopard) to check all my accounts (2 gmail, 1 hotmail & 2 private domains).
My private domain accounts don't receive all my messages, I can tell becasue in my domain settings all my mail is re-sent to another gmail account. There are many emails I can see in my "backup" gmail account that my mac mail doesn't receive.
I constantly have to check my gmail account to make sure there are no unattended messages that I haven't seen.

I use my mail app (max OS X snow leopard) to check all my accounts (2 gmail, 1 hotmail & 2 private domains).
My private domain accounts don't receive all my messages, I can tell becasue in my domain settings all my mail is re-sent to another gmail account. There are many emails I can see in my "backup" gmail account that my mac mail doesn't receive.
I constantly have to check my gmail account to make sure there are no unattended messages that I haven't seen.

Mail is red flagging all sent messages

Hi,
This is my first time posting in the community as I am ALWAYS able to find a fix for any Apple issues by searching the web. However, I am completely stumped on this one.
Since upgrading to Mavericks, every single message I send in Apple Mail on my exchange account gets automatically tagged with a default red flag. No matter what I've done so far, I cannot stop mail from automatically flagging all sent mail.
This does not happen with my 3 Gmail accounts I have running in mail.
Additionally, when the messages are flagged, they are only flagged in Mail. When I look in Outlook 365 online, the messages are not flagged.
I have tried to rebuild mailbox, went into System Preferences and unclicked 'Mail' under my exchange account in Internet Accouts then re-checked it. I have no idea what else to do as I have not been able to find any semi-related topics anywhere like this.
Any suggestions?
Thank you!

You might try using another e-mail program to see if the same thing happens.
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I do not want to import all mails to Apple Mail

How can I import some amount of mails to my Apple Mail?
I'd like to import mail since this year. I do not need all my old mail since 2007.

Open up /Users/username/Library/Mail/your account folder/ and then within each mailbox folder, the Messages folder. Delete any emlx files with dates earlier than 1 January 2013. Then, launch Mail and import what's left.

Mail Won't Import All Emails

I just upgraded from an iMac G4 running 10.3.9 to a SR MacBook Pro with 10.4.9. I used the Migration Assistant to move my mail, but not all of the messages transferred. I also tried copying ~/Library/Mail manually but got the same results. When Mail imports the messages, the progress bar has the correct number (### of 2167), but it stops midway and I end up getting only 532 messages. Any suggestions?

The conversion from Mail 1.x to Mail 2.x is broken. Here’s an example of the most common variant of this problem and how to proceed in those cases:
Just upgraded, Most of my old Inbox is gone!
Your problem, however, is different in that you don’t even get an incomplete conversion. If Mail stalls during the conversion process, you may try to identify the mailboxes that Mail is choking on, quit Mail, move those mailboxes out of ~/Library/Mail/ (e.g. to the Destkop), and trash any Envelope Index-named files you may see in ~/Library/Mail/, so that Mail re-creates the index and tries to import the remaining mailboxes again, then manually import the problematic mailboxes as Other.
Alternatively, you may want to set up Mail from scratch and manually import your mail back afterwards. This would allow you to use Mail normally while solving the problem of importing the old mail as you see fit:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/. Move (not copy) the entire Mail folder out of there, to the Desktop.
3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate com.apple.mail.plist and move it to the Desktop.
4. Open Mail and set it up again from scratch. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don’t. Just enter the account information and check that everything works fine.
5. You’ll have to re-configure all 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.
6. Do File > Import Mailboxes and follow the instructions to import your mail from the old Mail folder that’s now on the Desktop. Import the Mailboxes folder first, then each of the POP-username@mailserver account folders, if any.
There are two ways to import Mail 1.x mailboxes into Mail 2.x. The obvious one is importing them as Mail for Mac OS X. But Mail 1.x stored mail in standard mbox format plus some additional support files, and this allows Mail 1.x mailboxes to also be imported as Other, i.e. as generic mailboxes in standard mbox format.
Importing as Mail for Mac OS X produces the best results when it works, because it takes into consideration all the files in the mailboxes, not just the mbox files where the messages are stored, and hence, allows information such as status flags to be preserved. Importing as Other, on the other hand, may work in cases where importing as Mail for Mac OS X doesn’t, because it looks at the mbox files only, ignoring the support files which is what Mail 2.x usually chokes on, but precisely because of that, information such as status flags is lost and previously deleted messages may reappear.
Hence, you may try importing as much as you can as Mail for Mac OS X, then import the problematic mailboxes as Other.
Note that what Mail asks for when importing depends on the format chosen. Mail always asks for the folder that contains the “things” to be imported. If Mail for Mac OS X is chosen as the data format, the “things” to be imported are the *.mbox folders, so you must choose the folder that contains them, not the *.mbox folders themselves. On the other hand, if Other is chosen as the data format, the “things” to be imported are the mbox files, so you must choose the *.mbox folders that contain them in that case.
Note also that some of the mailboxes now on the Desktop may have already been partially converted to the new *.emlx format during the previous (failed) attempt to convert them in place. If you tell Mail 2.x to import as Mail for Mac OS X a mailbox that already has a Messages folder, Mail will simply ignore the Mail 1.x files present there. If the mailbox was successfully converted to the new format, that’s fine, but if the conversion was incomplete, that’s not what you want.
As a result of doing all the above, some messages may be duplicated. Andreas Amann’s Mail Scripts has a Remove Duplicates script that you may find useful.
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. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the folder path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the folder path there.

HELP: Mail Wants to Start New Account!

Last night, all was well as it has been for over two years. This morning, I opened Mail, and all the folders/files on the left were bigger, and there were icons in front of them. I quit, rebooted my 'Book and restarted my modem (using Verizon DSL).Next time I went into Mail, it wanted to start a new account!
Where is everything, and where did it go?! How do I get it back?

I don’t fully understand what you say. In particular, “there were icons in front of them” doesn’t make sense to me.
What’s the capacity and space available on the startup disk? Take a look at the comments about disk space in the following article, in case they apply to you:
Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space
Even if there is enough space available on the startup disk, under some circumstances (e.g. 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.
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 making sure 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.
You have three options now:
(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.

I recently bought a new computer and have installed Itunes and now want to import all of my music from my I tunes folder to the Itunes library. How can I do this?

My music is all in a folder in D drive and the folder is called I tunes Music. When I open the I Tunes program it gives me the option to go to library and then to add files. I want to add the entire folder as there are too many individual files(songs) to add individually. It would take much too long to add each file. How can I add the folder and have I tunes recognize all my songs in the library? I had things nicely working when I was using windows 7. Thanks

Drag the folder into the library in the open iTunes program window.
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Urgent! Help! Mail wants to import all my messages!

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