can't delete a (corrupt?) email ...
i wanted to upgrade my jaguar system to panther recently. since i have several partitions on my HD and i wanted to spare myself the arduous chore of installing all my settings and programms all over again, i erased my OS9 partition and cloned my jaguar (10.2.6) using the latest version of carbon copy cloner onto that empty partition. i then upgraded the "clone" to 10.3. i repaired permisions and downloaded all the updates to 10.3.2. i repaired permissions again .
having done that, i launched Mail in 10.3.2 to check if all my settings had been preserved. once Mail had launched it proceeded to import/read my mailboxes and then ... hung itself - the progress bar being stuck at a certain point + spinning beach ball. after a while i force quit Mail and tried again, and again, and again. same thing every time.
i rebooted into 10.2.6 launched mail and realised that i had more that 1000 emails in my inbox and sent(box) and thought that maybe they were too many... so i proceeded to delete a couple 100. unfortunately i encountered 1 email in my inbox that i couldn't delete or move without Mail (this time in 10.2.6) hanging again. it hangs when i try to look at the email, it hangs when i try to move/delete it alone, it hangs when i try to move/delete it with others ...
the email has an attachment (i assume that it is a jpg).
what can i do to get rid of it?
having done that, i launched Mail in 10.3.2 to check if all my settings had been preserved. once Mail had launched it proceeded to import/read my mailboxes and then ... hung itself - the progress bar being stuck at a certain point + spinning beach ball. after a while i force quit Mail and tried again, and again, and again. same thing every time.
i rebooted into 10.2.6 launched mail and realised that i had more that 1000 emails in my inbox and sent(box) and thought that maybe they were too many... so i proceeded to delete a couple 100. unfortunately i encountered 1 email in my inbox that i couldn't delete or move without Mail (this time in 10.2.6) hanging again. it hangs when i try to look at the email, it hangs when i try to move/delete it alone, it hangs when i try to move/delete it with others ...
the email has an attachment (i assume that it is a jpg).
what can i do to get rid of it?
Comments
Originally posted by bryan.fury
unfortunately i encountered 1 email in my inbox that i couldn't delete or move without Mail (this time in 10.2.6) hanging again. it hangs when i try to look at the email, it hangs when i try to move/delete it alone, it hangs when i try to move/delete it with others ...
the email has an attachment (i assume that it is a jpg).
what can i do to get rid of it?
I ran into a problem like this myself once before with Mail. I fixed the problem by looking at the mailbox file in a text editor, and carefully replacing the offending message attachment and associated embedded mark-up with exactly as many innocuous characters (I think I used spaces). My guess is that something about the formatting of the attachment was causing confusion when Mail tried to parse the mailbox.
I can't remember the specifics, and this is only something you should attempt if you feel technically competent, and after making careful backups beforehand.
i assume you mean this file: INBOX.mbox ?
what i don't understand, is that it is an old email that i have already looked at at some point ....
Originally posted by bryan.fury
aahh, well i think that might be a bit over my head. i tried bbedit lite -> but that generated an error ...
i assume you mean this file: INBOX.mbox?
Those .mbox "files" aren't really files, but packages (and packages are just a special kind of folder that acts more like a file in some contexts).
If you right-click or control-click on a package, you'll get an option to "Show Package Contents". Inside your .mbox package, you'll file a file named simply "mbox"... that's the one you want to try to edit.
what i don't understand, is that it is an old email that i have already looked at at some point ....
Likewise when I had this problem. Only trying to delete the e-mail or move it to another mailbox caused trouble.
Originally posted by Kickaha
Generally you can rebuild the mailbox by (strangely enough) going to the Mailbox menu and selecting Rebuild. This will resync with the server (if needed), rebuild indexes, etc, and generally make things happier.
You're right that that's the best thing to try first, but when I ran into this problem, Rebuild wasn't enough to fix it.
the act of clicking on it (in order the then run "rebuild mailbox" from the menu)
causes mail to beachball and hang while "indexing" the offending box,
effectively preventing you from running the internal rebuild mailbox tool.
an external app (like the keychain repair tool) that would rebuild any mailbox would be better.
Haven't tried it yet myself in 10.3.x, void where prohibited, some restrictions may apply, yadda yadda yadda
i tried "rebuild" but had to abort it after 15 min of inactivity ...
i then followed shetlines instructions: "show package contents" and opened the mbox file in bbedit. since i had deleted all emails prior to the offending one it was easy to identify the offending one. it consisted of several hundred pages of "gibberish"... after creating a backup i deleted tha "email", restarted Mail and PRESTO! the corrupt email was gone and everything worked again!
thanx everyone!!!
I have a file in my Sent Mail box.
and when the mail program tries to index the sent box it sits on that one it will still receive and send email But if I want to quit mail I have to force quit.
I know there is an MP4 in the email and thats its about 5.4megs. I have sent emails with mp3s in them before in fact I sent a few with in minutes of each other. The indexing goes through the others fine but stops at that one every time.
I'm running the latest panther.
Its irritating cause after a few mins of sitting there the fan on my laptop [12" PB] goes on and well who like hearing that.
flick.