Mail Issues #2...

[seawasp]

Well, I switched from Netrape Aggravator to the Mac Mail program for the interim.

So far, I can't get any of the obvious applications to open (a copy of) the original mail file. Word of course doesn't recognize it, TextEdit refuses it, and when I tried:

"formail -e -d -s inboxfile >> newinboxfile"

(substituting "Inbox" for "inboxfile" and "NewInbox" for "newinboxfile")

my console just sorta sat there for, well, a long time until I finally killed it off. There was a new file called "NewInbox", but it had nothing in it.

Any more ideas? I've got like 1.2GB of mail file sitting there mocking me. I'm sure MOST of it must be perfectly fine.

Comments

[laptop-mechanic.livejournal.com]

Have you tried thunderbird?

[ninjarat.livejournal.com]

Fire up Terminal and edit the file with vi: "vi filename". The first few lines should look something like this:

From MAILER-DAEMON Wed Jul 29 18:45:59 2009
Date: 29 Jul 2009 18:45:59 -0400
From: Mail System Internal Data <mumble@mumble>
Subject: DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA
Message-ID: <mumble@mumble>
X-IMAP: 1172181894 0000005764
Status: RO

If they don't then either you have the wrong file or a compressed copy of the file. BTW, type ":q!" to quit without changing the file.

[m0rlock.livejournal.com]

Your formail command is broken. formail doesn't take an input file as an argument - it operates on stdin. So what you probably want is something more like

formail -e -d -s < inboxfile >> newinboxfile

Which probably won't help, but at least it'll do something.

[kpreid.livejournal.com]

Suggestion: Take the top of the file (say as displayed in 'less', which will replace the ^Ms etc.), drop it in a text editor. blank out any personal information, and show it to us, who might then be able to recognize the format or the way it's mangled.