Home » Blog » Apple Mail » Manually Re-index or Rebuild Apple Mail Mailboxes
Apple Mail

Manually Re-index or Rebuild Apple Mail Mailboxes

  author
Published By Mohit Jha
Nimisha Ramesh
Approved By Nimisha Ramesh
Published On November 18th, 2022
Reading Time 4 Minutes Reading

rebuild-apple-mail-Mailboxes

Most of the issues associated can be solved with the help of the process to re-index or rebuild Apple Mail mailboxes. Moreover, after a period, the mailboxes turn heavy and start giving problems. Recreating the mailbox eliminates all kinds of damaged or unhealthy files, which can be present in the profile folders. Therefore, in this blog, we are going to learn a technique for rebuilding the mailboxes in Apple Mail.

There is an inbuilt function to build the mailbox once again in Apple Mail. It is not as complicated as it seems to be. In fact, it is quite simple to perform. Users just need to click on the menu of the mailbox and then select “Rebuild”. Once they do this, they have to wait for a moment. The process of waiting can be the toughest step in the entire procedure. This is because it can take hours depending on the mail numbers and the size of the database. In case, you have more various mailboxes, then you are recommended to perform this for every mailbox in order to rectify the problems you are encountering.

One more thing that may annoy you is that it will re-download each item from the mail servers for IMAP and MS Exchange accounts.

Automated Solution to Restore Mailbox Emails into a Healthy Format

In case, you want to rebuild Apple Mail mailboxes in any other format then you can opt for a third-party utility. One of the famous applications for the same is Mac MBOX Converter. This is one of the advanced utilities, which is specially designed for the conversion of any MBOX file into EML, PDF, and HTML.

Download Now Purchase Now

Working Steps of Software to Rebuild Apple Mail Mailboxes

Step 1. Download and Run the Software and Add a file.

rebuild apple mail mailboxes

Step 2. Now, Choose the Option Export.

rebuild apple mail mailboxes

Step 3. Then Apply the Advanced Setting to Export.

Step 4. Last, You can Export Mac Files into Other Formats.

rebuild apple mail mailboxes

Re-index or Rebuild Apple Mail Mailboxes – Manual Method

The process of re-indexing is quite similar to the process of rebuilding. However, there is a little bit different. In case, after the automatic rebuilding, the problem in Apple Mail persists, then it is important to re-index or rebuild Apple Mail mailboxes in a manual way.

Apple Mail attempt to re-indexing every email message automatically itself at the time a problem is suspected. However, the process of re-indexing the Apple Mail manually is always suggested. Now, to re-index or rebuild the mailbox, you need to follow these steps as mentioned below:

  • First, you need to quit mail in case it is in a running state
  • Now, open Finder and then, go to the Library
  • After this, navigate to the location: /Library/Mail/V2/MailData
  • Find the file, which is with “Envelope Index”
  • In the next step, copy the file somewhere else so that, you can restore it back in case anything goes incorrect. Then, erase the original one
  • As soon as you do this, you need to launch Mail and it will try to re-building the file that you have deleted automatically
  • It may take much time to re-indexing the mail messages
  • In case, the Mail is not running fine, you need to copy back the previous or original “Envelope Index” file
  • However, if it is working absolutely fine, then delete the created backup file. Once you are done with all the steps, the re-indexing process will finish.

Re-indexing and Re-building can easily solve a majority of problems with Apple Mail. The entire process resets the options for Apple Mail, which gets your complete database refreshed, checks for all the issues, and finally eliminate them.

Sum It Up

In the above blog, we have discussed that in some situations users wish to re-index or rebuild Apple Mail Mailboxes. However, instead of such an immense increase in technology, it is still quite a challenging task. Therefore, to lessen their problem, we have discussed a manual way to complete this task. Users can even move their Apple Mail files to other formats with the help of a third-party tool as discussed above.