I have been having a bunch of email problems and want to start over. I have deleted all the IMAP accounts from Mail. What other files do I need to delete, hidden and otherwise, to make Mail (and only Mail) just like a clean install?
2 Answers
The following directories should be empty:
~/Library/Mail
~/Library/Mail Downloads
~/Library/Application Support/Mail
~/Library/Caches/Mail
~/Library/Caches/com.apple.mail
The following files should be removed:
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist*
~/Library/Saved Application State/com.apple.mail.savedState
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Tried this, but it does not work for me to get of rid of my problem with Mail Default Reader preference selection.– user18723Feb 14, 2012 at 15:51
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Then maybe it's better to ask a new question describing your issue. Screenshots may help as well.– nohillside ♦Feb 14, 2012 at 17:52
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I tried this and now when I open mail after add an account it sits there doing nothing. It doesn't go get my mail from the server. Jan 14, 2015 at 18:29
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The solution was aimed at OS X Lion, things may have changed in the meantime. If deleting the additional file listed in the other answer doesn't solve your problem, it might be better to ask a new question using the Ask Question link at the top. Please add a link/reference to this question here.– nohillside ♦Jan 14, 2015 at 18:41
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What about com.apple.mail-shared.plist, should I remove that one too?– rraallvvAug 3, 2017 at 16:17
In addition to the folders mentioned by Patrix, I discovered that Apple Mail (at least the OS X 10.9 Mavericks version) is using another folder, at:
...../Library/Containers/com.apple.mail
After I had tried to do a clean restart of Mail by disabling (re-naming) all the folders that I thought that it was using (and having done a Force-Quit of the process "cfprefsd" in my username, to further reset caches), my Mail froze on trying to start up.
When I also disabled the folder in Library/Containers, the Mail application was able to start up.