What is it with Mail ....

Question

that it steadfastly refuses to retain the sort by "Newest message on top"?
I have tried so many times using View/sortby/Newest... and when I close down Mail and come back it has gone to oldest first.  I have used both the Non-Classic layout and the Classic layout and clicked the date column which reverts to newest on top, but how the H**l do I get the thing to retain it? Do I have to get rid of some file in the bowels of the machine and let it set itself again, or do I have to reinstall Mail, which I think cannot sensibly be done, short of a complete reinstall of Mavericks. (I do not intend to go through the 2 hour time scale to accomplish that!)
Any help would be appreciated.
Cheers
altv

Answer 1

Back up all data.
1. Triple-click anywhere in 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.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, 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 (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.