Repair unimportable Mail mboxes for re-import

Jan 28, '04 09:31:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

Problem: When trying to split up a huge sent mail mbox into smaller folders (mbox files), I grabbed to many mails at once ... mail crashed ... no mail was copied from sourcebox to destinationbox ... worse, I could not get to any mail in the previously large sent-mbox. Mail could not import it, tried for 20 seconds (via import) and had nothing imported. Still, the mbox was big in size (2.7 GB), so I hoped there must be "something left". Since mbox files are basically text files, I tried to open it in BBEdit, but this gave me an OS warning about "increase your partition size" and "memory is too small" (no wonder, my memory is 1.5 GB). Anyway:

Solution: Installed Barebones' Mailsmith (which has a 30 day full function trial period). Imported the mbox (via drag and drop in Mailsmith's onto the Mail Browser window), and this did the trick. All of my mails (about 5000) got imported nice and clean. This mbox I exported and could easily reimport in Apple's Mail.

Just my two cents - In case it helps someone.

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