If it opened with the "Welcome to Mail" message, introducing what Mail is and then going through a setup wizard, your com.apple.mail.plist file was either removed or corrupt. I suggest you pull a com.apple.mail.plist file from a backup and place it in your ~/Library/ Preferences folder if you don't want to run into this. If you've already filled out the wizard, then you may want to consider checking over all your rules, signatures, and other items that are contained in your preference file.
Mail works by using two main items in your user folder. A "Mail" folder is located at ~/Library/Mail and contains all physical mailboxes and messages in a format called an .mbox file. In reality, each mbox contains tons of little files, each is a separate message. Your mail signatures and other notes may also be contained in the Mail folder. The other component is the preference file located at ~/ Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. This file contains your account settings, application preferences, and window positions and layout. There are even some hidden preferences you can only change by manually editing the file itself, such as a preference to turn off HTML display completely. If you're ever asked for an account password, these are not stored in any files associated directly with Mail.app. They are stored as keys in your Keychain. Your keychain is a single encrypted file containing your passwords you've saved. Every time you check one of those "Remember my password" check boxes, it gets stored right there in your keychain. This can be useful, as one computer password can then encrypt all the rest of your passwords. It always freaks me out when someone creates a new Mac account on the computer with no password, because there is a simple and effective way to gather up passwords from Keychain Access that is dangerous on unprotected accounts. If you've got a password on your user account, just consider it the most important password. If you ever forget a password, but you know it is stored in your Keychain, you can open the Keychain with the Keychain Access program in Utilities. You can select a key by interacting with the table, then press VO-Shift-M and choose to "copy" it from the pop-up menu. Here's where the account password is important. You'll need to enter it to complete the copy action. If the account has no password, pressing return will just give it away, so make sure you've got a password on your user account. Once you copy it, paste it wherever you need it to go. As an example of why this function can be useful, one day my mother called me and asked if I could help her get the password for the gmail account I set up for her. SInce she uses Mail on her Mac, the Keychain Access program and her Mac account password was all we needed to recover her gmail password, without the insanity of Google's recovery process. So, a little off topic, but I hope this provides you with some things to think about, and a resolution to your issue. Good luck, Ryan Dour On Mar 24, 2009, at 4:55 PM, william lomas wrote: > > hi when i started up mail today it asked me to re-enter > my account > details again yet all my mails are intact is this normal > very strange > Will > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
