Mail.app – About reindexing messages

If there are problems with information in your mailboxes, it may be necessary to reindex your messages. During this process, certain Mail folders on your computer are moved to another location, such as your desktop. When Mail is reopened, it rereads and reindexes all messages in all local mailboxes. The reindexing process can take several minutes depending on how many messages are in your local mailboxes.

When Mail detects a problem with your mailboxes, it may alert you that it needs to repair them by reindexing your messages. At other times, you can reindex messages yourself. To do so, quit Mail and, in the Mail folder in your home Library folder, move the Envelope Index file and any folders that begin with “Mac-”, “Exchange-”, or “IMAP-” to a different location, such as your desktop. When you reopen Mail, it reindexes all messages.

Mail.app – Rebuilding mailboxes

In some cases, you might need to rebuild a mailbox to update the list of messages in the mailbox–for example, if messages appear to be missing or garbled, or if you can’t find all relevant messages by searching. Rebuilding a mailbox can take awhile; it’s recommended for fast Internet connections only.

To rebuild a selected mailbox:

Choose Mailbox > Rebuild.

For IMAP accounts, locally cached messages and attachments are discarded and the messages and attachments are downloaded again from the server to your computer. Your mailbox appears empty until the download is complete.

Aligning Kerio Webmail and Apple Mail

You may have noticed that your Sent, Trash, and Drafts folders differ depending were you view them. The problem is that Mail.app doesn’t look for existing folders with the name Sent, Drafts, or Trash (or Deleted) in them; it creates ones with those names. Furthering the confusion, you can’t change these in the Kerio Webmail interface. Read on to learn how to minimize the confusion.

UPDATE – I’ve discovered that if you set up your Mail account as an Exchange account (vs. an IMAP account), this is not necessary.

Identify the correct folders

Since you can’t change the folders that Kerio Webmail uses, Mail.app has to be the one that yields. When you log into Webmail, note the subtle difference in the name of the folders; Kerio includes the word "Items" in the various folders. The Inbox on both systems the same but Webmail uses Deleted Items and Sent Items. For some reason, though Drafts is the same, but Mail.app doesn’t find it, either. Once identified, move your mail from the old/wrong folder to the correct folder.

In the example above, you’ll see a system that shows both Deleted Items and Deleted Messages. Deleted Items is the folder Webmail uses, and Deleted Messages is the one Mail.app uses.

 

Prepar to move the existing messages

This step can be done in Mail.app or Web mail. It’s FAR FASTER to do it in Webmail. And you can speed up this process by changing the number of messages in your list from 25 to 200 in Webmail’s Settings dialog box.

Select the OLD mail folder in the list of folders. Select all in the list of messages. Right (Control)-Click to see the menu on the right above and select Move or Copy.

Move the messages

As you click Move or Copy in the previous step, this new window will open. Click Move to get the messages from one folder to the other.

Switch to Mail.app

Now is a good time to tell you about a irritation in Apple Mail; Mail.app doesn’t show you all of the folders that reside on the mail server easily. You’ll find a list of all the folders on the Mail server under the label that contains the name of your account (the name of the account is arbitrary, and it is set or changed in Mail -> Preferences -> Accounts -> {name of your account} -> Account Information -> Description)

To see the folder that Kerio Webmail is using for Sent, Trash, and Drafts, turn the arrow down next to the account name.

All Folder View

When you click the arrow next to a folder or account name, the contents are shown (just like most any other Mac application that presents / hides information in lists and sub lists).

Select the Sent Items folder

This is where you alter where Mail.app stores it’s messages for the various folders. Select the Sent Items folder as shown.

Assign the new Mailbox use

After you selected the proper Sent folder in the previous step, use the Mailbox menu to select Use This Mailbox For -> Sent. Mail will swap the folders to their new use, so make sure you check to make sure the old folder still doesn’t have any mail left in it, or that you have another computer that needs this modification.

And the repeat the above steps (starting at Step 1) for the Trash/Deleted, Junk and Deleted folders.

And keep this tip around because every so often, Mail resets this preference for you.

Help! Mail.app won’t let me send messages!

We can thank the spammers and scammers for this one. Our Internet providers are trying to keep us safe and their networks free from attack and spewing spam messages to everyone, but in doing so, it makes it hard for us to send messages. These steps should minimize the problems you have sending mail when you are on a hotel or conference wifi network.

 

What is the problem?

When you are at work, your email sedning functions normally, but when you move away from work, the email refuses to go. It must be something wrong with your computer, right? Maybe, but maybe not. Most likely you are on a network that disallows Mail from being sent over the standard port. And not only does it not allow the standard port, it tricks Mail.app into thinking mail is being sent (Connection Doctor works), but the messages really don’t go anywhere.

Your friend – Connection Doctor

If you are having Mail sending problems, the first thing you want to try is the Connection Doctor. Access this feature by choosing Window -> Connection Doctor. If you get green lights, that usually means things are working. But, if not, read on….

Standard Mail Client Settings

The screenshot above shows how probably 99% of all Mail.app setups are configured. This is supposed to work everywhere. Well, everywhere but where you are right now, that is. Apple has done something nice for us here – Mail.app attempts to send mail on port 25 (this is the standard port for all email traffic; unfortunately, it’s heavily abused by spammers and scammers), and if that doesn’t work, it tries port 465 and then port 587 (465 and 587 are “alternate ports” for email sending, and usually requires SSL to be enabled). The problem depends on HOW the network in your location is determining what you are doing on port 25. Getting really technical, it is possible to allow port 25 to be open to verify connectivity (what Connection Doctor does) but not allow mail to be sent. Quite simply, Mail THINKS it can send mail on port 25, but the mail server on the other side never sees the connection attempt.

How do I fix it?

Make one simple change, as shown in the red box. Rather than allowing Mail to figure out what port to use, force it to port 465 (or 587, your choice, and if one doesn’t work, try the other). You access this screen by choosing Mail -> Preferences -> Accounts -> Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) -> Edit Server List -> Advanced.

Now that was easy, wasn’t it.

If all else fails?

Use your webmail interface! That’s why it’s there!

iCal nits and picks

How to get the most out of iCal on 10.5 and 10.6

 

iCal automaticaly puts events on the wrong page!

This is a screenshot from 10.5, but 10.6 is very similar. If iCal is set to automatically retrieve invitations from Mail, it puts them on the top-most calendar. This is frequently a non-shared calendar (such as Home), and those calendars can’t be moved or made non-primary. You have two options: 1) Disable the feature in iCal to automatically retrieve invitations from mail and drag the ical attachment in the message to the correct calendar; 2) Delete your Home calendar, and, if needed, add another Calendar (but keep this one private, if you wish) on your Calendar server.

iCal takes a LONG time to start up/sync

If your iCal takes a long time to start up or sync, asking iCal to Delete events x days after they have passed, the sync time will speed up dramatically. If 30 days is too short, set it for anything, such as 60 or 90 days. This way it doesn’t have to sync events so far in the past. If you really need to save your calendar for future reference, Export the calendar and then re-import it to a local (non-server-synced) calendar after you have deleted the events. And if you don’t want to do this automatically, set yourself a reminder in iCal do do this once a quarter.

How do I change the COLOR of my various calendars?

This one has a strange solution. If it’s a calendar you control, meaning it’s a calendar you created and it resides on your iCal, or you subsribed to it, just Get Info on the calendar and change the color. If you aren’t the owner of the calendar (meaning it is a calendar you see but it’s based on a Caldav server), ask the owner of that calendar to change it. Once that is done, quit iCal and start it again, and when it syncs, it will pick up the new color. Now the trick is getting everyone to pick a different color. Sorry, I can’t help with that.

I want to sync my Google/Gmail or Google Apps calendar to iCal, but I get errors

To set up CalDAV support for Google Calendar in Apple’s iCal, follow these steps:
Open Apple iCal, go to iCal > Preferences and then the Accounts tab.Click on the + button to add an account.Under Account Information, enter your Google Account username and password.Under Server Options, add the following URL:

https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/charlietheguide@gmail.com/user

Replace ‘charlietheguide@gmail.com’ with the email address that you use to log in to Calendar. Make sure to include the ‘@domain.com’ portion (which is @gmail.com for Gmail users) in this section.Click Add.Under the Delegation tab, select the calendars you’d like to add to iCal by checking the boxes next to them. You may need to hit refresh to get the latest list of calendars.Add your email address to your Address Book card by selecting Add Email. You’ll be prompted to add your email address only if your address is not already in your Address Book.
The two main points of clarification here are:

- removing the space from the end of the URL
- making sure you include the ‘@domain.com’ portion in the URL

You can also check this web site for future updates or changes to these instructions.

iCal just won’t work

Sometimes, try as you might, you can’t get iCal to function AT ALL. If you want to reset iCal, first, make sure you’ve backed up your data by selecting each calendar and choosing File -> Export. Then, open the Terminal application (found in the Utility folder (Go – > Utilities) and paste in this line:

rm -rf ~/Library/{Caches,Caches/Metadata,Preferences,Application\ Support}/*iCal*

This will remove all your calendars, caches, and other data from iCal so you can start from scratch.

Then you can re-set up your Caldav accounts and import your previously backed up/exported calendars and get a fresh start.

You should use this only as a last resort.