Got error “Message has not been downloaded” after upgrading to OS X 10.4.
A couple of weeks ago (06/16/07), I upgraded one of my home Macs to OS X 10.4. After doing so, Mail.app got upgraded to version 2.1. My wife is the only one who uses Mail.app. And I am tech support for the family. After the upgrade, she got the following error message:
“Message has not been downloaded from the server, take this account online to view.”
I’ll skip to the solution and tell you that the problem has nothing to do with what the error message suggests is wrong. Apple simply goofed when it built Mail.app 2.1, and some mailboxes (for whatever reason) do not properly import after you upgrade to OS X 10.4. There is a somewhat helpful Apple support article on this topic and a much more helpful blog post from Betalogue. My favorite paragraph from that blog post is this one:
“At that stage, I almost expected Apple to ask us to fire up Terminal and type in a
mvcommand! All of a sudden, they’ve decided to acknowledge that the Mac OS X desktop is a visual metaphor after all, and are allowing you to move stuff, you know, like, spatially. On your desktop! Amazing!”
Much humor.
So here’s what worked for me. Six mailboxes were busted. It’s not obvious which are busted and which are not. Check all of them by trying to view messages in each. Also check the date ranges of the mailboxes to see if they make sense. If you can’t read messages in the mailbox or if messages appear to be missing, then the mailbox probably needs to be fixed. In my case, I fixed one mailbox by reindexing it (step 2 from the Apple support article), and I fixed the other five by reimporting them as type “Other.” The reimporting step is (unnumbered) step 4 from the Apple support article:
[T]ry importing as type “Other” instead of [as type] “Mail for Mac OS X”
I agree with Betalogue. That Apple support article needs an overhaul. Plus Mail.app shouldn’t break because of a point upgrade to OS X. Sheesh! Hope it helps.
