I cant see my Emails

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Hi; Since yesterday , my emails have dissapeared , the mail Icon is in the desktop, but when I click it it never shows the email folders, and most of the options in the menu bar are greyed out , Im using Mac OSx 10.6.8
can someone please suuget a fix for this?
thank you
Mariano
 
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chas_m

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Are you trying to tell us you moved the Mail icon out onto the desktop and now it can't find the database with your mail? What happens when you move it back to Applications where it belongs?
 
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no, I did not move anything, when I quit the Mail application, it goes back into the Applications folder, then If I click in the mail icon in the applications folder it gets in the applications bar in the bottom of the screen (like it should) but clicking into it does not bring the Mail screen up.
I have been using this system for the last 3 years.
 
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chscag

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The Mail application is placed on the Dock (bottom menu) by default. All icons which reside on the Dock (bottom menu) are aliases which are pointers to the application they represent.

The next time you open Mail from the applications folder and the icon appears in the Dock (bottom menu) right click on it and select "Keep in Dock". From then on, the icon on the Dock can then be used to open the Mail application.
 
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yes, I did that, (keep it in the dock) but clicking on the icon it does not open anything, is there any command that I have inadvertently push that hide the emails?
tegards
Mariano
 
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I have tried to restore a backup of Mail from Time Machine, from a time that I knew that Mail worked , and still the restored version of Mail does not work, time Machine is ALWAYS plugged to the computer, but if I try to do a complete system restore it would find only a backup from february.. ARRRGGGG
this problem is causing me to lose a LOT of faith in this system...
 
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If you're trying to restore the mail application it's not a surprise it's from February, that's the last time the application was updated. Time Machine backups changes.

That's not the way forward. You are looking for the data the application holds, not the application.

But before going down that road . . . .

Who provides your mail account? gmail, yahoo, your ISP etc etc.

Are you able to log into your account online? If so are the emails you're expecting to find shown there?
 
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yes Im able to log into the Account online and also get my emails from my ipad, and iphone, the problem is
the Imac , if I click in the mail application in the dock, nothing happens even if I click 1000 times, if I right click in the application in the dock, options ,Hide, And Quit are available, the rest are grayed out
and I can only Quit the application from the Force quit menu in finder.
thank you for taken your time
mariano
 
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Is the menu bar for Mail visible?

If so try going to File - New viewer window
 
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MacInWin

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no, I did not move anything, when I quit the Mail application, it goes back into the Applications folder, then If I click in the mail icon in the applications folder it gets in the applications bar in the bottom of the screen (like it should) but clicking into it does not bring the Mail screen up.
I have been using this system for the last 3 years.
Pardon my density, but does this mean that when you start Mail from the Applications folder, the icon appears in the Dock, but Mail doesn't open? If you start Mail from the Applications folder, you should NOT have to then click again on the Dock icon because Mail should already be opened. And you said later
yes, I did that, (keep it in the dock) but clicking on the icon it does not open anything, is there any command that I have inadvertently push that hide the emails?
tegards
Mariano
which means that even when you close Mail, the icon on the Dock should stay there, not go "back into the Application folder."

As I said, I'm dense and not understanding what is happening, really.
 
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Pardon my density, but does this mean that when you start Mail from the Applications folder, the icon appears in the Dock, but Mail doesn't open? If you start Mail from the Applications folder, you should NOT have to then click again on the Dock icon because Mail should already be opened. And you said later which means that even when you close Mail, the icon on the Dock should stay there, not go "back into the Application folder."

As I said, I'm dense and not understanding what is happening, really.

up to when this problem happened , my mail did not open unless I click into the Mail icon in the bottom application bar. Now if I click in the same icon that I used to click to open my emails , the top mail menu bar , appears , but a lot of sub-menus are greyed out, and of course my email database is not there.
hope that this is clear now.
thank you for your time
 
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Have you tried opening a new viewer window as per my post above?
 
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What options do you have available on the menu bar menus for Mail?
 
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What options do you have available on the menu bar menus for Mail?
MAIL services,EDIT select all,attachments,find, spelling & grammar,substitutions,transformations,speech
VIEW columns,short by,select, message,go to,use this mailbox for, MESSAGE Mark,text encoding, FORMAT Show fonts
list,style, alignment,indentation,quote level
the above options are bold
the rest of options are grayed out, including many of the sub-options of the bold options above.
thank you for your time
Mariano
 
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If you log into the guest user or another user does Mail run ok?
 
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OK, that tells me that Mail, as an application is working ok. So it's the mail account within mail that's broken in some way.
You've already confirmed that your mail is safe and well online so I think you should go ahead and reset mail. If that works you can add you mail account back in.

Make sure you're fully quitted out of mail

All these folders should be emptied (make a copy first if you wish)
~/Library/Mail
~/Library/Mail Downloads
~/Library/Application Support/Mail
~/Library/Caches/Mail
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail

All of these can be renamed, moved or deleted:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist*
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.mail.savedState

Restart Mail
 
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OK, that tells me that Mail, as an application is working ok. So it's the mail account within mail that's broken in some way.
You've already confirmed that your mail is safe and well online so I think you should go ahead and reset mail. If that works you can add you mail account back in.

Make sure you're fully quitted out of mail

All these folders should be emptied (make a copy first if you wish)
~/Library/Mail
~/Library/Mail Downloads
~/Library/Application Support/Mail
~/Library/Caches/Mail
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail

All of these can be renamed, moved or deleted:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist*
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.mail.savedState

Restart Mail
Thank you for your answer, but please let me correct something .I said that I can get access to my " newer" emails ( a few days old before the provider shut the door for over use)
but the access to my >9k emails database still is forbidden, and there is very important emails for me in that database.
can you please suggest a solution on which I can get and read the files of such database?
thank you for your time
mariano
PS . maybe get the database from a few days before the crash from the backups.
 
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chas_m

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I'm pretty lost on this, but your last message suggests that:

a. the emails are stored on the provider's server, not your mac
b. your provider is blocking you for "over use" (whatever that means -- maybe your POP mailbox is full?)

So it would seem to me that the first step in fixing this issue is to get back in good standing with the provider by managing your email through the web browser and downloading/removing old emails you don't need.
 

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