Dave, Thanks for the great ideas. I'm running CE under Classic on Panther (on a G4 powerbook), and already tried deleting the temp incoming folder -- that's become part of my default troubleshooting routine. I don't mean to say CE has been absolutely flawless over ten years, but with the help of the Emailer Talk list every glitch has been easily fixed. This has the feeling of more than a glitch, though.
I didn't realize that the account info is kept in the mail database -- that explains how that happened. It also makes it more likely that I'm just dealing with a corrupt database and not something more cosmic. I had been thinking that the account info was in a separate file, so I was worried that the problem was in the CE app, and not just one of the files. I tried copying the index and DB file over to another computer (also running CE under Classic on Panther, but on a G3 iMac DV SE). I had the same result. CE opens the file and it looks the same as it did on the Powerbook, ie the accounts are still missing, the same folders are still called "orphaned", etc. I closed CE, and relaunched holding down the option key. When the rebuild dialog came up and I told it to rebuild, CE just quits, regardless of whether I select the typical or advanced rebuild options. As on the Powerbook, it leaves two new files in my "Mail" folder: "Mail DB (Incomplete)" and "Mail Index (Incomplete)", 20 KB and 4 KB respectively. So something is happening, but it's happening quickly because CE quits with no perceptable delay. Running Disk Warrior on it is a good idea, but I have to buy it first. No big deal, I should have done it when I switched over to OSX a year ago. Since Norton is discontinuing Mac support, I don't want to go that route though. You're absolutely right about John Carlsen's archiver -- it works fine and it's a good choice for trying to recover the data into an archive. Speed doesn't matter, I'll just set it to run on the G3 and not worry about it (I only use the G3 as a fax and back-up server these days). One potential problem is going to be folder mapping, though. The last time I used the archiver script, it couldn't read folders numbered above a certain number (200-something, IIRC). Apparently, when CE creates a folder, it internally assigns a unique, sequential number to it, with an upper limit on the number of folders in the sequence. Once you go over the 200-odd limit, it starts assigning wierd exponential numbers to the folders. Deleting a folder doesn't free up the number. CE can deal with it, but the archiver can't. My workaround was to recycle seldom used folders -- you can rename a folder endlessly, CE seems to track it by number, not by name. Hopefully, my DB problem didn't mess up the folder numbering. Thanks for the good workarounds -- that'll solve my immediate problems. Cheers, Steve Blum [EMAIL PROTECTED] >* Does DiskWarrior or Norton Disk DR find any disk or file problems? >Please use fairly current versions, or ones of the same or newer vintage >as your OS. What about if you boot with extensions off, then try to open >or rebuild emailer? > >* if this db still sort of works, you can keep it strictly as a archive. >Rename your Emailer application to "Emailer-Archive only" and use it ONLY >for looking up old emails. Use a fresh Emailer, or at least a fresh mail >db & index, for all further communications. > >* The EMA archive script & FilemakerPro solution from John Carlsen is >really pretty good. It's not real quick though. It took me about 3 days >to export/archive 80,000 emails from CE to FMP. I did not delete them >from CE. It's possible that maybe the EMA can retreive your emails. Start >with the most important folder(s), and do it in chunks. ><http://homepage.mac.com/ThinkAgain/Mac/index.html> > >* all the other emailer parts except the mail db & index are probably ok. >So you can probably use them. Unfortunately the accounts are kept in the >mail db, so you may need to e-enter that info if you can't use the orig >mail db file. > >* Do not ever try to combine a mail db & a non- matched index file. > >* Don't overlook the "Temp Incoming" folder. It should be empty. If not, >drag out whatever is in there & relaunch emailer. If you are running OSX, >then drag the whole temp incoming folder out of there. OSX makes a >".DS_Store" file that is trouble for emailer. This invisible file is >created when the folder is opened, so try to avoid opening that >particular folder. Other folders don't have this problem. > >Hope this helps. > >Dave Nathanson >Mac Medix > ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
