Motorola phones only from AT&T
January 3, 2007 8:30 AM PST
Mail.app "Home directory full" error messages -- fix
If you experience an issue where Mail.app erroneously reports that the home directory is full, it may be the result of a problematic envelope index. Forcing Mail.app to rebuild this file will often resolve this issue.
The first thing to try is to select the afflicted account in the left-hand pane of the main Mail.app window, then go to the "Mailbox" menu and use the "Rebuild" option.
Failing the above, follow these steps to force a rebuild:
- Quit Mail.app
- Navigate to ~/Library/Mail
- Drag the file "Envelope Index" to the Trash
- Launch Mail.app and check for persistence of the issue
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.
Resources
I haven't tested this recently, but this was reproducible on three of my Macs (iMac Rev B, G3/350 and iBook G4 running 10.3.9, 10.3.9 and 1.4.x). My guess is that Mail.app gets confused if the user starts doing things to e-mails while it is still downloading, and corrupts the envelope file when updating it.
As an aside, when you have a few hundred thousand messages, it's faster to search your mail using Spotlight (kind:email search-string) than it is to use Mail--even if all you are doing is searching for a sender in a single mailbox.
- by ocdinsomniac January 4, 2007 8:43 AM PST
- One thing to note: If you've color coded any of your mail message, using the "Rebuild" command will wipe out all your colors.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(3 Comments)-systemsboy