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Create a colorless top-level Mail folder
Authored by: PancakeMan on Feb 11, '04 12:04:06PM

I did this by accident. Now I would like to drop mail into that "colorless folder" and I can't. Is there an easy way to convert it to a blue folder that can hold messages? (Easier than recreating new folders and dragging the old stuff to the new, I mean.)



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Create a colorless top-level Mail folder
Authored by: adf on Feb 11, '04 12:54:04PM

As far as I can tell, a blue folder in mail.app has both a folder AND a .mbox file of that name in your mail folder in your user Library. The white folder only has a folder (no .mbox). That is why you can't put mail in it directly. There doesn't seem to be a good way to create an .mbox for an existing folder in mail.app.



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Will this work?
Authored by: jecwobble on Feb 11, '04 02:04:43PM
I'm not at my Mac right now to test this, but couldn't you just
  1. alter the name of the white folder
  2. create a new blue folder in the same level as the white one with the name you previously had for the white one
  3. drag all folders from the white folder to the blue folder


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Will this work?
Authored by: PancakeMan on Feb 11, '04 04:09:12PM

Yes, that will work, and that's exactly what I've done to solve my problem. But I still think the interface would be more intuitive and graceful if you could drop messages, or folders, into a white folder, thereby converting it into a blue one.



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Create a colorless top-level Mail folder
Authored by: jtratcliff on Feb 11, '04 04:31:42PM

not a problem.... First, quit Mail.app, then from your terminal of choice,
just create an mbox directory for your target mail folder.... e.g., for a
"white" folder named foo

% cd ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes
% ls -al foo
drwxrwxrwx 12 You staff 408 1 Dec 12:35 foo
% mkdir foo.mbox


You might also want to change the permissions:

% chmod go-rwx foo.mbox
% ls -al foo.mbox
drwx------ 6 You staff 204 11 Feb 13:15 foo.mbox

Now re-launch Mail and you should be good to go... It takes a second for
Mail.app to recognize the new mbox, but after a brief pause, the icons
should change from white to blue.



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