Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

tru322 · Jun 3, 2003, 07:57 AM

OK, so I logged out of my main user account and into another account then back into my account (something I rarely do - mostly stay logged into my account). I then fired up mail.app and it presented me with a window saying that as I haven't got any mail accounts set up do I want to set one up now.

Um, I do have an account set up - several actually. What do I do??? I don't want to lose all the emails I've got so I didn't try setting up a new account. Should I take it to see a therapist, they can be very expensive I hear

Any ideas anyone?

P.S. Running Mac OS X 10.2.6 on PowerMac G4

Edit: Ooopps, posted in wrong forum - how do I move this thread to the software forum?

CatOne · Jun 3, 2003, 11:33 AM

Originally posted by tru322:
OK, so I logged out of my main user account and into another account then back into my account (something I rarely do - mostly stay logged into my account). I then fired up mail.app and it presented me with a window saying that as I haven't got any mail accounts set up do I want to set one up now.

Um, I do have an account set up - several actually. What do I do??? I don't want to lose all the emails I've got so I didn't try setting up a new account. Should I take it to see a therapist, they can be very expensive I hear

Any ideas anyone?

P.S. Running Mac OS X 10.2.6 on PowerMac G4

Edit: Ooopps, posted in wrong forum - how do I move this thread to the software forum?

Your mail is stored in ~/Library/Mail

What's in that directory? There should be a 'Mailboxes' directory which stores all your mail and data in MBOX format.

cpac · Jun 3, 2003, 12:45 PM

sounds like your Mail preferences got messed up.

You might be able to just delete those.

Also, you might want to check and see if your disk is near-full as this can cause problems when applications quit and try to write their preferences.

I'd also run a disk repair utility and repair permissions and see if the problem just doesn't go away...

tru322 · Jun 4, 2003, 10:18 AM

Well everything still seems to be where it should. My ~Library/Mail appears to have all my mailboxes in it.

Anyways here's what's in that folder (sensitive data replaced with XXXs):

[XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX:~/Library/Mail] XXX% ls
Bundles
Mailboxes
POP-XX@XXX.XXX.net
DefaultCounts
MessageSorting.plist
POP-postmaster@XXX.com@mail.XXX.com
LSMMap
POP-XXX@XXX.net
Mac-XXX
POP-XXX@mail.XXX.net

[XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX:~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes] XXX% ls
Deleted Messages.mbox
Junk.mbox
Outbox.mbox
Personal
Work

I have tried a repair permissions but that didn't help. The OS did report that my hard disc was nearly full a few days ago (there was about 200MBs free) so I emptied my trash freeing up about 10 gigs, so that may be an issue.

Which of Mail's prefs should I try deleting?? Will that really help - it'll probably be totally convinced that I don't exist if I do that won't it??

tru322 · Jun 4, 2003, 12:12 PM

OK got it all sorted now. For those interested - I just made a copy of my ~/Library/Mail folder for safe keeping, bit the bullet and just re-entered my details into the new account setup window. Mail opened up and still seamed to have all my custom mailboxes present and all the saved mail in them that they should have. My inbox/junk/sent items etc. where all empty and none of my mail accounts were to be found in the preferences.

Anyways I managed to rescue the email I was missing (from the sent items .mboxes) from the backup I made and now all is good, fingers crossed

cpac · Jun 4, 2003, 01:20 PM

Originally posted by tru322:
The OS did report that my hard disc was nearly full a few days ago (there was about 200MBs free) so I emptied my trash freeing up about 10 gigs, so that may be an issue.

That's exactly what caused the problem.

The disk was full of running programs etc. so it didn't have any room on which to write Mail's preferences.

Try to keep at least a gig or so free for these kinds of fun things...