I have a situation where a mail rule on a certain Inbox causes mail to be diverted to a mailbox '* items to shift".
My app then periodically moves those stored email to a mailbox “* items to store”, processes them, and stores them according to the processed contents.
My problem is that ‘* items to shift’ has a varying number ( at present 78) of ‘ghost’ emails that are counted, and it’s causing my app to think it’s never finished.
Does anyone know of a way to clear these ‘ghosts’, please. They’ve been driving me bonkers!.
‘Rebuild’ does not work. Only quitting and restarting Mail clears them, (a bit impractical).
Regards
Santa
tell application "Mail"
say (count of messages of mailbox "* items to shift") --< shows as empty, but counts as 78
set t to every message of mailbox "* items to shift"
set x to 0
repeat with eachmessage in t
set mailbox of eachmessage to mailbox "* items to store"
end repeat
say (count of messages of mailbox "* items to store")
end tell
Yeah, there has been those double email references and you’re probably not imagining things. I’ve been trying to isolate when these doubles occur and will try again with the specifics of your post. Hopefully I can duplicate it with your exact procedure.
Edited: firstly, does this occur in your inbox or in every mailbox?
I’m shifting mail from my inbox by mail rule, to the first , temporary mailbox.
Then, my app picks up the whole stored list from that first mailbox and resets each message to a second, processing mailbox.
Ghosts can occur for as short while (I think about 10 seconds), in either mailbox after being shifted, but sometimes these short term ghosts become ‘stuck’ permanently, and I haven’t been able to figure out why.
ATM I’m storing the count of the first mailbox’s messages, and then re-counting on a subsequent pass, and if the number is the same, quitting and re-starting ‘Mail’. Very cumbersome, and it usually takes place after every email, and we get over 400 jobs per day.
Response time is critical, so I check every 4 seconds for new mail, and the mail rule also triggers my App. This means the temporary ghosts are found, and the Quit/Restart Mail handler kicks in.
Regards
Santa
Edit
This procedure shows how mail is still counted in the first mailbox after being shifted.
tell application "Mail"
activate
say (count of messages of mailbox "* items to shift")
set t to every message of mailbox "* items to shift"
repeat with eachmessage in t
set mailbox of eachmessage to mailbox "* items to store"
end repeat
say (count of messages of mailbox "* items to shift")
say (count of messages of mailbox "* items to store")
end tell
So what you might do is copy the mail from the inbox. Then, delete the mail from the inbox. Then, just deal with the mail that you have copied to your temp mailbox. When you copy the email to your temp mailbox, you’ll have only copied one message no matter which of the duplicates you have chosen to copy, in your script.
When you delete the mail that you have copied, note that there may be more than one. Thus, you need to delete every mail including the duplicates.
Note that, you can identify an email uniquily by its internet id. Hence, you can distinguish which emails are duplicates.
I would have to review my previous posts on this internet id, but it is somewhere on this site. If you can’t find it then write back.
And this is not a recent bug in Mail. It has been happening since about 2012 at least I think. The main thing is finding the unique internet id. I think they added a way to get the id in these later oses. So it is not that hard.
I think it’s in the System Events dictionary. Not sure. It’s somewhere (maybe Mail).
Thank you, your method works well. Initially slows things down a bit, but that’s more than made up for by my being able to remove all the code that was trying to overcome the ghost problem.
I’ve not used the method on the Inbox, as that wasn’t causing a problem, but on my other two mailboxes. I’ve also stuck with resetting the emails mailbox, rather than copying it.
The method for the first is…
Regards
Santa
tell application "Mail"
#
try
if not (exists mailbox "* items to store") then make new mailbox with properties {name:"* items to store"}
end try
try
set tempMail to every message of mailbox "* items to shift"
repeat with eachmessage in reverse of tempMail
set theTempID to message id of eachmessage
set the mailbox of eachmessage to mailbox "* items to store"
repeat
try
if ((exists (some message whose message id is theTempID)) of mailbox "* items to shift") then
try
delete ((some message whose message id is theTempID) of mailbox "* items to shift")
end try
else
exit repeat
end if
on error
exit repeat
end try
end repeat
end repeat
end try
say (count of messages of mailbox "* items to shift") --< Now always zero
say (count of messages of mailbox "* items to store")
end tell
Model: Late 2014 retina i7, Yosemite
AppleScript: 2.4
Browser: Safari 600.2.5
Operating System: Other
I jumped up from about 2003 to about 2013, so the problem with duplicate emails must have started from somewhere in-between those dates. When I first got this machine, there was no problem with duplicate emails in the inbox until Mavericks (I think or Yosemite), but the virtual references started in Mavericks I think. Anyway, Hope Apple fixes this.
