Yesterday I received an inquiry from a reader who was looking for the Switching to Mac OS X Yosemite (10.10) has the problem that Apple Mail has stopped working. Here is his mail:
Dear Sir Apfelot,
the problem sits right in front of the pc and is almost desperate.
Why? The update on my Mac Mini went smoothly, but Mail doesn't work ==> error message “Mail index corrupted”.
I tried the trick of deleting the so-called “envelope files” (note: see my article here). Unfortunately, it doesn't work in this case.
Is there any other tip?
Chapter in this post:
Solution in the English Apple Support Forum
That was an interesting question. At first I was on the hunt, because the rebuilding of the mail database helped me quite well (back then under OS X Mountain Lion). Interestingly, the German Google search only produced hits where people had the same problem with Yosemite - but unfortunately no solution either. Only the search in English pages then has the important link in a Apple support forum brought. Various users also describe the problem and possible solutions there, all of which unfortunately did not work. Only one entry that was only written at the end of October 2014 brought a new idea. I am putting the original English text online here:
Ok, this was a bit of a sledgehammer, but here is what I did. The idea was that the indexes were corrupted, so delete them and let Yosemite rebuild the indexes without being confused by the existing indexes. As you may know, the mail data is in ~/Library/Mail. So, I made a copy to ~/Library/MailBackup as I experimented with different options. “Envelope Index-*” are built by the import, and increase with every failed attempt, so certainly they could be deleted. I deleted every *.plist, presuming Mail would rebuild them. Ditto *.backup. AvailableFeeds, DefaultCounts, Metadata, RSS, *.noindex were deleted on general principles.
The real problem I suspect was in * .mbox, which was the old Mail format. Our mail when we checked it in 10.6.8 had some blank emails (who checks 4 year old emails for integrity? ...). Where did they go? Who knows, but I suspect that was the real problem. So, I deleted * .mbox. Now restarted Mail, and the import worked this time. We lost a few emails from 4 years ago, which was probably when we made the last transition.
Hope that helps!
Apple Mail works again - under Yosemite!
I also sent this tip to the reader and got the answer back this morning that it was the decisive tip. With the help of Apple Support, the problem was solved:
Thank you very much for the quick response.
The hint helped me a lot. With the help of an Apple advisor, I was able to find out that the real problem was that I hadn't made any updates since the purchase.
The “V2” folder was therefore not created in the Mail folder. The solution was then to proceed as described in the forum and finally to set up the Internet accounts again.Now everything is working again. Phew ...
My tips & tricks about technology & Apple
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Jens has been running the blog since 2012. He acts as Sir Apfelot for his readers and helps them with technical problems. In his spare time he rides electric unicycles, takes photos (preferably with the iPhone, of course), climbs around in the Hessian mountains or hikes with the family. His articles deal with Apple products, news from the world of drones or solutions to current bugs.
With the practical, free tool "Onyx" you can, among other things, delete the mail index with a mouse click. Many other functions are accessible via GUI, e.g. the system's own maintenance scripts, deleting caches, etc.
Best regards,
Robert
Hi Robert! Thanks, good tip, if you want to get the result with a few clicks of the mouse. :) But I have a critical view of Onyx and these system maintenance tools in general ... see my article here. But it is certainly great for such purposes!
Hi sir, welcome! And what else, the box should work for the user, not the other way around :-) You should also see this critically, after all you are on the move with an “open heart”. It's been done occasionally with a soldering iron since the mid-80s, so there's a certain routine ;-) It not only makes my work easier for graphic designers with a number of fonts (keyword font cache) and musicians with many plug-ins and dependencies , which have accumulated over the OSX versions. With the right options, I save a lot of manual steps and time and can then already rule out “classic” problems (SMART, rights, font cache, incorrect indices, etc.).