Tiger Mail (2.1.1) suddenly making (most) *downloaded* IMAP mail "has not been download from the server.."

[Jim Witte]

Hi,

   Strange problem that just surface on Intel Tiger 10.4.10, and Mail  
2.1.1.  I have a my IMAP set up with a LOT of filters for different  
local folders, to download messages and store them locally, and then  
delete them off the server (I forget where the option to "delete when  
moved" is right now, but..). Anyway, I opened up a folder and clicked  
on a message and it said, "this message has not been downloaded from  
the server.."  The connection was "online" (as far as mail was  
concerned), and I checked with Webmail and sure enough, there was  
nothing there (these messages had been downloaded days ago.

   Strangely, this ONLY happened with "single messages" - ones that  
were in threads were preserved fine.  (I didn't try turning threading  
off to see what happened.  I suspect I would have seen the same  
thing)  In one person's email folder (with no threading of messages),  
ALL the messages were gone (with the possibly exception of 'sent'  
messages I had written and put in there).  But the headers were still  
there.  I rebuilt the folder, and now the headers disappeared too!  I  
panicked a bit here - I have a recent backup, but it's still about 4  
days old ("hello Time Machine.."  Although on a laptop the time  
capsule or more-expensive-per-gigabyte portable HD [which are small]  
is about it).  So I quit mail look in the Finder at ~/Library/Mail/ 
ASD/* Binstock.mbox (that should contain all the mail, and sure  
enough, all the .emlx files are there..)  So I take mail "offline",  
quit it and reopen it.

   Everything comes back, without any rebuilding at all.

   Mind you, I have probably at least 10,000 messages in my hierarchy  
("reminds me of IU webmail program, Hoard - "we know where mail comes  
from, but where does it *go*?").  I have been doing a LOT of  
spotlight searching in the Mail app itself, which may be adding to  
the databases and corrupting them perhaps)  Should I rebuild any  
particular SQLite databases that Mail uses (I know the 'vacuum  
subjects' command will speed up Mail quite a bit, and possibly clear  
out broken pieces of the DB?  Or just delete the databases and let  
Mail rebuild them on it's own?

   Or just start backing up mail every day.. (and get Leopard and a  
Time Capsule - can you hack another Mac's external drive into working  
like a Time Capsule?)

   Or get Entourage or something more appropriate for the kinds of  
really advanced filtering I'd like to be able to do (by person,  
storing outgoing message to different people in specific folders,  
being alerted or able to color messages in threads that 1) I started  
2) I posted to.  Set colors of messages IN MAIL AND SET SPOTLIGHT  
COMMETNTS!! (Why the HECK can't I do that now?  It's just an elmx  
file and in the finder you can set SL comments on any file - so why  
not directly from Mail?)  Or for that matter change subject lines,  
rethread separate message threads that get broken or forked..  Do  
rule-based processing on mail based on a text file of subjects  
(coloring particular subject lines, etc). Or write my own email  
client (but then I lose SL - or at least Mail's presumably optimized  
SL implementation - and anyway I don't do Cocoa, much less SL or  
CoreData or SQLite programming..)

   Or just learn to love some semi-graphical Emacs where I can write  
my own Elisp macros to do whatever I want (I would LOVE the ability  
to hook onto any functionality of a program without rooting around  
for object names and message calls, and using APE to do it..  The  
ability to attach Applescript Studio script to Apple apps would be  
nice..  And impossible I think)

Jim