A workaround for a read-only Mail inbox

Jan 21, '04 10:35:12AM

Contributed by: osxpounder

I recently received a new Mac on my desk, and moved my data from old to new via Carbon Copy Cloner, including the entire Users folder. Upon setting up Mail to check my IMAP email account, I found that the Inbox was "read-only," and that I could not change ownership or permissions on my Mail folders in my Library folder.

Well, my new user name and old user name were slightly different, for clarity's sake, and of course the old Mail folders were "owned" by the old user ... but even though I am an admin user, I could not get the permissions to change. They would show the proper user names in the Get Info text fields, but there were still red minus-sign badges on the folder icons that showed the folders were still read-only. Permission changes were not taking effect. Comparing this Mail folder with that of a test user account I created showed that these permissions were definitely wrong.

Finally, I moved the entire Mail folder out of my Library and started Mail again -- now I can finally delete mail from my Inbox.

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