In Leopard, when you go offline while using Apple’s Mail program with an IMAP account, you may get the following error message, or something similar:
“Some actions taken while the account “xxxxxxx†was offline could not be completed online.
Mail has undone actions on some messages so that you can redo the actions while online. Mail has saved other messages in mailbox “Apple Mail To Do†in “On My Mac†so that you can complete the actions while online.
Additional information: The IMAP command “APPEND†(to Apple Mail To Do) failed with server error: Invalid mailbox name..â€
And if you click OK enough times, the program crashes.
There are two ways to correct this problem (both ways will preserve your mail settings (you will NOT have to reconfigure your Mail program) and your mail will appear in a few seconds after first opening the Mail program after performing the fix below):
1st Way (easier way)
1. Make sure your Mail program is closed
2. Open Macintosh HD (double-click on it)
3. Select your Home folder (it will be on left nav bar with the picture of a house)
4. On the right side of the window, double-click on the “Library” folder (to open the folder)
5. Double-click on the “Mail” folder
6. Remove (move to the trash) the “IMAP-youremailaddress@here.com” folder
7. Close everything and open Mail to confirm it has been fixed
2nd Way
Delete all entries in~/Library/Mail/IMAP-email_address@mailserver/.OfflineCache . The folder is actually only accessible in shell since its a hidden directory, so you will need to access it via Terminal. This is for advanced users only, so I won’t bother writing a step-by-step instruction, as those users will know how to do it.
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2 Pings to “Mail has undone actions on some messages – Apple’s Mail Program”
67 Responses to “Mail has undone actions on some messages – Apple’s Mail Program”
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1. Mark Malson Says:
January 4th, 2008 at 10:02 amThanks loads! I was pulling my hair out over this and your 2nd way was the only thing that worked for me. I almost switched back to Entourage over this…
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2. brendan Says:
January 27th, 2008 at 3:08 pmThanks a lot, exactly what I needed!
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3. Ian Brown Says:
January 27th, 2008 at 7:54 pmGreat. Glad to help.
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4. ray Says:
February 7th, 2008 at 2:02 pmThank you!
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5. Jack Says:
February 8th, 2008 at 9:15 amI deleted the folder but still had the issue. It turned out there were a few mails in my Draft folder that had attachments over a GB. (I copied the file names from the Finder and thought I was only pasting the names. When in fact, I was attaching the whole QT. I corrected it in the email immediately but the damage had been done in my Drafts folder.) So before I quit Mail, I had to go offline and delete all the offending drafts. After that, I followed the directions above and I’m back on track.
Thanks for the info.
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6. Peter Aitkens Says:
February 10th, 2008 at 4:42 amPlease award yourself at least four attaboys! It is just so good when you find someone who a: Understands the problem and b: Provides a solution that even I can understand. Thank you.
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7. Matt Says:
February 13th, 2008 at 9:55 pmJust a note. You can access hidden directories by using “Go To Folder” under the Finders go menu. In this case, you’d navigate to ~/Library/Mail/IMAP-email_address@mailserver/ then choose go to folder & type the rest, “.OfflineCache”.
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8. Mark Says:
March 8th, 2008 at 12:06 pmThank you so much. I’d been struggling with this problem for over a month, and could find no mention of the problem on Apple’s site.
BTW you should know that googling: “mail has undone actions on some messages so that you can redo the actions while online” leads directly to you.
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9. Barbara Says:
April 13th, 2008 at 3:41 pmThank you so much. I can’t believe I actually managed to fix the problem! You instructions were superbly clear. Thank you for writing in normal words instead of geek!
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10. Simon Says:
May 12th, 2008 at 3:55 pmTHANK YOU SO MUCH.
It worked for me:-) -
11. David McMillen Says:
May 14th, 2008 at 2:53 pmI’ll add my thanks to the chorus: Thanks! This was great, I got this bizarre error suddenly today, and Google led me right to you. It’s much appreciated.
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12. Aaron Says:
June 5th, 2008 at 6:32 pmThanks for publishing this. It helped a lot.
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13. richo Says:
June 28th, 2008 at 8:19 amThank you, thank you, thank you !!!!
I spend 2 days searching the net and there was no help except from you !!!
You made my day
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14. Bill Carozza Says:
June 29th, 2008 at 12:56 pmGreat fix!! Thank you Ian-you have down a great service.
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15. Thomas Says:
July 16th, 2008 at 10:17 pmTHANKS, THANKS, THANKS!!! I had the same error but not with gmail… wit my own server, I tried everything! but finally this helped. I don’t believe that the people of apple haven’t fixed this, and now that we are in Mac OS X 10.5.4!
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16. kevin Says:
July 17th, 2008 at 11:22 pmthanks been stuck on that for ages, you legend you, very easy even for me!
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17. Kishi Says:
July 31st, 2008 at 4:47 amWhat a great EASY fix….
Thanks to Matt as well for the idea of using the finder instead of terminal.Saved me hours possibly days more of frustration with mail!
Thanks again
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18. Chad Perkins Says:
August 11th, 2008 at 6:59 pmHoly cow. I love you. Your fix worked for me as well. Thank you so much for donating your time to free help for us all!! *headache goes away*
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19. Jeanne Muir Says:
August 12th, 2008 at 12:18 pmI have a compounding problem. I have three IMAP accounts, one from an old domain pointing to another newer domain. However, I have FOUR of the IMAP folders in the library>mail> IMAP … folders.
Two are clearly the suspects. They are:
1. old-domain-email@old domain @ mail.newdomain
2. newdomain-email@newdomain@mail.olddomainI am not certain which to delete, and wonder if I can delete both of them with no ill effects? Can you tell me exactly what the file folder name should look like?
Compounding this is that my timemachine is not operating properly (thank you, time capsule) so I feel especially vulnerable if all my mail were to be affected.
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20. Ian Brown Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 12:29 pmHello Jean,
Sorry to hear you’re having such problems. Just delete both of them. The IMAP folders that it needs will be rebuilt automatically when you start Mail again.
The great thing about having it set up via IMAP is that you will not lose any email. All of your email is still on your mail servers. You are just viewing it via the Mail program.
Also, with regard to your Time Capsule issue, I’m not sure what issues you’re having, but sometimes when you reboot the Time Capsule, you have to connect to it again, as it gets disconnected.
To do this, simply open a finder window (click on Finder in the bottom left of your screen), select your Time Capsule (which should be listed on the left side of the finder window), click the CONNECT AS button in the upper right corner of the finder window, and then enter your Time Capsule’s password to connect to it again.
After that, you can just go up to the Time Machine menu in the top right section of your screen, to the left of the clock, and select “Backup Now.”
If that does not work, go up to that menu again, go to the Time Machine preferences, click “Change Disk,” and then select your Time Capsule again. Then close that, go up to the Time Machine menu again, and select “Backup Now.”
Hope that helps!
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21. Jeanne Muir Says:
August 13th, 2008 at 1:56 pmThank you. I ended up going in to the genius bar today since I could not work, and so they solved it before I tried your method. Your explanation, however, is so clear and concise.
As for the timecapsule, when I do reconnect on it and click to see contents, it shows sparsebundles for each of the four machines that should be backing up, including mine and my server, but they don’t open for me. I cannot see them in the desktop/time machine format. AND, my sparsebundle has 105 GB of apparent backups in it. Will I lose those by just doing the “change disk” maneuver, and configuring again?
I also cannot see my SERVER timecapsule backups from any of the machines including the server keyboard. What simple thing am I completely missing here?
So, just to say it another way, two of my laptops are time machining for their local files, but have no access to the server time machine backups. the third laptop has lost its configuration, can however see the sparsebundles for all four but cannot connect to its backup nor the server’s.
And, again, thank you!
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22. Ian Brown Says:
August 16th, 2008 at 8:17 pmHi. Sorry for the delay. First, you can not just open the sparsebundles manually. You can only view each backup from its respective computer by clicking on Time Machine in the Dock or in the Applications folder of that computer.
Secondly, when you connected to the Time Capsule again, did you try just backing up right after you reconnected instead of changing the disk?
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23. David Henderson Says:
November 6th, 2008 at 4:25 amThank you SOOO much.
Some you understands the problem and gives clear instructions on how to fix it!
I’ll be taking a note of your website.
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24. Frustrated No More Says:
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:17 pmI found your .OfflineCache ip on another site and had to come here and thank you for it. I really didn’t want to just delete my whole folder (it seemed stupid and like using a sledgehammer instead of a tweezer. anyway – thank you.
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25. Audrey Says:
February 13th, 2009 at 12:19 pmI think it worked!! Thank you, thank you! My mail was on the gerbil wheel of that stupid error message followed by a billion “drafts.” Ugh!!
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26. Ian Brown Says:
February 13th, 2009 at 6:04 pmLOL. Glad I could help you, Frustrated No More. Sledgehammer vs. a tweezer. Funny.
Great, Audrey! My pleasure.
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27. Kay Says:
February 17th, 2009 at 5:46 amI tried doing the first way and its still not working. I’m using a .mac email account. for some reason I’m not seeing the IMAP-youremailaddress@here.com to delete…and it feels like my computer is moving 1000 times slower because of this…is it something im not seeing?
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28. Stefanie Says:
February 19th, 2009 at 4:28 pmThanks Ian!! Saved the day and made me look like I’m brilliant to my co-workers – thanks a bunch.
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29. D Says:
February 24th, 2009 at 12:22 pmI am having the same issue as Kay…no option for the IMAP-youremailaddress@here.com to delete. Please help.
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30. Matthew Says:
February 25th, 2009 at 2:44 pmThanks. This was a lifesaver!
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31. shawn giese Says:
February 26th, 2009 at 11:07 amthanks, helped me too.
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32. Ashley M Says:
March 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 amThanks that helped alot. btw can u help me with this other problem?…
I have a mac, with leopard installed. And i use MSN all the time. And when i’m chatting online i can’t seem to chat message after message. What happens is the IM box thing greys out everytime i enter a message to my friend. So i ALWAYS have to click on it again n again EVERYTIME i enter a new message to the same person i’m talking to. its REALLY annoying. Didn’t used to happen, just started happening last week. ALSO at the same time my Hotmails been f*cking about too. The site works fine and it gets me into my Inbox fine, but then apart from that nothing works. No other links work. Junk, Reply, Delete…nothing works. And i can’t get into my emails or that eithers. So do u know wots going on? I tried contacting Microsoft but havent got replied to
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33. plgx Says:
March 4th, 2009 at 2:09 pmI had found a fix just before reading yours (rm-ing the .OfflineCache/ folder). It worked in the sense that I was able to receive mail again. However, my drafts folder still has the file (five times) that caused the original problem, and not even with your fix have I managed to delete them. Any ideas?
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34. ryu Says:
March 8th, 2009 at 11:52 pmYes, second method worked for me. Thanks much.
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35. plgx Says:
March 9th, 2009 at 1:35 pmThe problem is I don’t seem to have the .OfflineCache directory anymore (since I deleted it with rm -r, and now it doesn’t appear anymore when I do an ls -a inside the ~/Library/Mail/IMAP-email_address@mailserver/ directory). Thanks a lot for your help.
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36. Sam Harding Says:
March 16th, 2009 at 12:36 amGood post. As always you give a refreshing view on the subject, I always make a point of checking this blog and your feed.
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37. Heiko Behrens Says:
April 27th, 2009 at 2:56 pmthanks a lot! You are my rescue!
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38. Richard Shephard Says:
April 29th, 2009 at 1:54 amOh well done you. Have a cookie. Thanks a million for your first method, which worked straight away.
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39. Tanja Jewell Says:
May 2nd, 2009 at 2:57 amA big giant THANK YOU!!
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40. jon Says:
May 13th, 2009 at 9:05 amYou’re the man! thx alot.
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41. Gavin Wye Says:
May 21st, 2009 at 1:55 amThanks Ian .
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42. joe nguyen Says:
May 27th, 2009 at 1:36 amIt would be nice to see more of this.
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43. Santiago Lema Says:
June 1st, 2009 at 12:15 amThanks *a lot* for this. I got this issue after transfering loads of e-mail from my previous account using pop to IMAP on gmail and your second solution solved it in a matter of seconds.
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44. Chadhurbhujaya Says:
July 1st, 2009 at 1:09 amI usually don?t post in Blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful ?
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45. alexandra Says:
July 9th, 2009 at 1:14 amto be honest i still don’t know what the problem was or what your solution fixed but I, like everyone else, googled “Some actions taken while the account “Gmail 2” was offline could not be completed online.” and found you. It is fixed, I GOT MAIL so a huge THANKS Ian.
I do have a small question re pop and imap – let me know if you don’t mind answering and I will see if I am able to put into words what I would like to understand – thanks again
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46. Anthea Says:
July 16th, 2009 at 6:55 pmTHANK YOU! Very clear and saved my laptop from being hurled out the window…!
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47. Ian Brown Says:
July 21st, 2009 at 5:58 pmSorry for the delay, Alexandra. Been busy with other projects. Let me know what your question is. Just in case I can save time, the main difference between POP and IMAP is that with POP, you are actually downloading the email to your computer, whereas with IMAP, you are simply VIEWING the email on your mail server via your email software program.
So, with POP, if you have it set to delete your email on the mail server (where your email first goes when it is sent to you) after you retrieve it, then if something happens to your computer, you lose your email.
However, you can set your email client (software program) to either leave a copy on the server or leave a copy on on the server for so many days. That way if something happens, you still have your email (but NOT your sent mail), or at least you have it for a certain amount of time if you opt to have it delete your email after a certain amount of days.
With IMAP, you are VIEWING your email on your mail server (where your email is stored on the Internet). When you download and read it (usually you have to click “get entire message” to be able to read the whole email or to be able to open any attachments, because it only downloads the first 20k worth of data), it is still on the mail server safe and sound. The only way it will no longer be on the server is if you delete it.
Hope that helps, but if it doesn’t, what’s your question?
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48. Rob in Devon Says:
September 1st, 2009 at 12:43 pmWonderful. Thanks for posting
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49. Joy Says:
October 14th, 2009 at 11:48 amThank you so much. I thought I was going to the looney house it was driving me crazy.
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50. Commission Blueprint Scam Says:
November 4th, 2009 at 6:35 pmIt’s so hard to find good information these days, I have read a few of your posts and I am very impressed with your site. Thanks
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51. HFM Says:
November 8th, 2009 at 11:58 amThank you. You fixed an enormous headache for me.
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52. Rose Says:
November 21st, 2009 at 1:42 pmThank you very, very much, Ian! Deleting the OfflineCache folder worked like a charm.
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53. Aloysius Says:
December 26th, 2009 at 2:08 pmMerry Christmas to me! It’s a tribute to my geekdom that I should be mucking about the internet on Christmas evening but that #*%& message came up one too many times and I found your solution online and in less time than it takes to unwrap a present my 6 month old problem has vanished with the Spirit of Christmas Past. It’s A Wonderful Life! God Bless us every one… and you especially Tiny Ian.
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54. Adam M. Erickson Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 9:31 amIt worked so painlessly.
FYI: it worked for OSX 10.5.8, nothing to worry about it took me longer to post this thank you.
Thank you.
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55. Aloysius Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 12:12 pmSlight problem: email boxes existed in the trashed folder that don’t exist in the reconstructed folder. I know there’s mail in them because I can see it and open it from the Finder. But reinstalling those folders into the newly created location doesn’t cause them to appear in Mail. I’ve tried “On My Mac” as well as their original email boxes and nothing brings ‘em back. Ideas?
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56. Ian Brown Says:
January 7th, 2010 at 12:37 pmThank you all for your kind comments. I really appreciate it. It’s always nice to hear how one’s work has helped better other people’s lives.
Aloysius, LOL, very funny Xmas comment. Sorry, but I am short on time, as I am heading out for CES (Consumer Electronic Show) in Vegas right now (I’ll be posting on this blog live from CES, btw, so stay tuned!)
Try posting your question on these two forums:
http://macosx.com/forums/
http://forums.macosxhints.com/They are very good over there and quick to respond. Good luck!
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57. matt nathanson music fan Says:
January 24th, 2010 at 12:34 amHey, I just wanted to drop a note and say nice post!
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58. Iven from Canada Says:
February 10th, 2010 at 4:45 pmIn my case, just restarting my macbook worked. Try that too.
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59. Ian Brown Says:
February 10th, 2010 at 8:44 pmThanks for the tip, Iven!
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60. Kevin Stancombe Says:
March 20th, 2010 at 7:23 amMany thanks for this particular insightful post. Every now and then, the best wisdom come from the places one wouldn’t expect. Until now, I failed to give a whole lot of thought to commenting on blog entries and have left feedback even less. Viewing your powerful post, will help me to take action again.
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61. Ara Pehlivanian Says:
April 15th, 2010 at 12:21 amYou just saved my butt! Thanks man.
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May 13th, 2010 at 7:53 pmThis is the most interesting web site I have seen on this matter. Lots to talk about. I’m going to show my friends. It will absolutely start a completely new area to talk about.
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63. Enjay Says:
May 21st, 2010 at 10:34 am2nd way for me, worked perfectly. Boom.
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64. zofia Says:
June 3rd, 2010 at 6:03 am#2 worked for me, thx!!
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65. Ian Brown Says:
June 3rd, 2010 at 11:19 amGreat to hear! Glad this post is helping all of you!
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May 22nd, 2009 at 12:31 am
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