Mail.app and usernames with slashes in them

Apr 17, '02 09:24:15AM

Contributed by: evanrose

After trying to set up Mail.app on the first day I had my new iMac and finding that the "Get Mail" button didn't work, I didn't think a whole lot about it and just used Mozilla Mail instead. I looked into Mail.app a few times over the next several weeks, editing my preferences, trying various different combinations, reading up on ports, comparing Mail's settings to my settings in Mozilla Mail on this machine as well as my others, all to no avail. Mail.app would not download any of my mail.

I then went looking at Mac OS X Support at Apple.com in the Mail.app section and found quite a few people who had posted problems that sounded an awful lot like mine; one even went so far as to clue me in to the fact that a username with a slash in it (in my case evanrose.com/evan) might be the issue.

In Mail's account preferences dialog box, there is an account option that has an uneditable text field that told me my local mail folder was created based on my user name (the one with the slash in it) and, being a long time 'NIX user, got suspicious (especially after I navigated to the Library/Mail directory in my home directory and didn't see the folder in question at all).

To make a long story short, after searching online and in other various places for upwards of two hours, I created a new Mail account and just called it "evan" with a username of evan. This action automatically created the correctly named folder, and finally, I edited my username to include the slash and suddenly, my inbox filled up. All is now fine, and I've switched from Mozilla's mail to Mail.app due to the nicer interface and easier deletion of messages.

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