I messed up Mail: how to fix?

[JeffOYB]

I set up rules badly for my Mail. I had several sets of rules where *any* of two rules had to be met and then the mail was put in one mailbox or another. It turns out that all my mail met a couple of the rules!

So I started noticing a LOT of mail in these mailboxes.

What I then did was to delete some of the rules then move the contents of the mailboxes back into the Inbox. Then I re-wrote the rules correctly so that only if *all* conditions were met would the mail go into one box or another. But I still had a couple mal-formed rules with the *any* option selected.

I decided to delete ALL my rules and to move all the mail from those boxes back into the Inbox.

Somewhere in the middle of doing this I noticed that recently received mail was mis-displaying. An email would have a header from one person but the body of another email! YIKES! Then search started acting up.

Also while I was doing this I was hearing Mail crunching along in the background.

I had a lot of mail accidentally put into those wrong mailboxes. So in the end, after those several partial changes, I patiently waited for all 25k emails to transfer back into my Inbox. Then I quit Mail and restarted it. It now SEEMS like some of the mal-formed mail is GRADUALLY getting better.

Is there some kind of re-indexing I should make Mail do to really fix things?

I once tried Rebuild and got into BIG trouble. (A lesson there that I vaguely recall is that you have to let it finish without interruption. I had thought that it had stalled and force-quit Mail in the middle of Rebuild.)

Or will Mail gradually re-index itself and self-recover from my mangle-ations?

I see official info on how to re-index, but don't want to do anything until I get my bearings here.

Thanks!

 

[Weaselboy]

Quit Mail then open Finder and hit shift-command-g (all three keys at once) and paste in the path below then enter.

~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData

In the Finder window that pops up delete the three Envelope files listed here.

Now launch Mail and wait while it reindexes.

 

[JeffOYB]

OK, I did that. This info confirms the re-indexing instructions I found thru Apple.

I note that I am already fairly alarmed at the results. Finger crossed!

Upon restart of Mail it thinks I'm using it for the first time now. I hope that all my mailboxes are still in place! Only a couple mailboxes were malfunctioning. Also, only a few recent emails were malformed.

This "re-indexing" process apparently involves importing all my mail over again. 125,000 emails... I'm nervous!

(I have ruined my mail before.)

UPDATE: IT WORKED! THANKS! : )