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11 Responses to “Panther’s Mail: Rebuilding mailboxes”

1. ssp says:
   April 7th, 2004 at Apr 07, 04 | 12:49 am

   I suspect you could use UI scripting to automate this task.

   That’s still evil but may be quicker.

2. Pierre Igot says:
   April 7th, 2004 at Apr 07, 04 | 3:38 am

   Evil indeed :). I would consider UI scripting a last resort here — I might try it some time. The tricky thing is that this mailbox drawer thingie behaves in a rather strange way: It never really is the “focus” in the UI (the highlighting colour is always the faded grey, never the normal selection colour). And you cannot browse it with the keyboard. Scripting mouse movements and clicks is a bit too icky for my taste, considering that my Mail Viewer window is not always in the exact same position.

   Would be much easier if Mail’s AppleScript dictionary included a “rebuild” command, obviously.

3. ssp says:
   April 7th, 2004 at Apr 07, 04 | 6:18 am

   Pierre, Perhaps UI Scripting is a little better than you think.

   You can actually query the UI elements present on screen in UI scripting and select them without needing to script mouse movements. (Hence the recent hype about potential Apple screen readers, I suppose).

   Of course a ‘rebuild’ script command would be better.

   … no ‘rebuild’ command would be the way it should be though – it’s not our job to keep Mail’s internal files in shape. ;)

   P.S. Try Apple’s UI Element Inspector to get an idea how powerful Apple’s assistive technologies are without getting your hands dirty. Then write a post asking why activating it is so complicated and noting that it doesn’t work in all but the standard system UI elements of your favourite Office suite (I haven’t tried that as I am working in a sane computing environment, but I’ll bet a bottle of wine….) or in iTunes.

4. Gabriel Gilder says:
   April 23rd, 2004 at Apr 23, 04 | 11:46 am

   Well, here’s a script that’ll rebuild all your mailboxes, in case you’re interested. Yes, it’s slow, yes, Mail is on crack and sometimes thinks you haven’t read any messages in a mailbox… but, it’s better than nothing. =)

   tell application “Mail”
   set myBoxes to every mailbox

   repeat with box in myBoxes
   set selected mailboxes of message viewer 1 to {box}
   activate

   tell application “System Events”
   tell process “Mail”
   tell menu bar 1
   tell menu bar item “Mailbox”
   tell menu “Mailbox”
   click menu item “Rebuild”
   end tell
   end tell
   end tell
   end tell
   end tell
   end repeat

   end tell

5. Pierre Igot says:
   April 24th, 2004 at Apr 24, 04 | 2:54 am

   Thanks for the script. You can use the pmCode tag

   pre

   for computer code if you want to preserve the formatting.

   Unfortunately, this script doesn’t work on my machine. When I try to run it, it starts by selecting the first mailbox in my “On My Mac” mailbox folder, and then stops with the following error message:

   System Events got an error: NSReceiverEvaluationScriptError: 4

   I need a script that can rebuild all my IN mailboxes, which are the most likely to need rebuilding. Of course, a script that would rebuild whichever mailboxes are currently selected would be ideal.

6. Gabriel Gilder says:
   April 24th, 2004 at Apr 24, 04 | 8:16 am

   Hi, I believe the error you’re getting is actually because you don’t have GUI scripting enabled. Go to System Preferences, Universal Access and make sure “Enable access for assistive devices” is checked. Then it should work fine.

   But, while I’m at it, here’s another script that will rebuild whatever mailboxes you have selected.

   tell application "Mail"
   	set myBoxes to selected mailboxes of message viewer 1
   	repeat with box in myBoxes
   		set selected mailboxes of message viewer 1 to {box}
   		activate
   		
   		tell application "System Events"
   			tell process "Mail"
   				tell menu bar 1
   					tell menu bar item "Mailbox"
   						tell menu "Mailbox"
   							click menu item "Rebuild"
   						end tell
   					end tell
   				end tell
   			end tell
   		end tell
   	end repeat
   end tell
   

   Hope that helps!

   -Gabriel

7. Pierre Igot says:
   April 24th, 2004 at Apr 24, 04 | 11:56 pm

   Thanks again… However, I am afraid I have to report that this isn’t working. The “Enable access for assistive devices” option has been checked on my machine for a very long time, so it’s not the culprit.

   With this new script you provided, if I select all my “In” mailboxes and invoke the script, Mail selects the first “In” mailbox, hangs for about 5 seconds, and then gives me the same error message as above.

8. Gabriel Gilder says:
   April 25th, 2004 at Apr 25, 04 | 6:07 am

   Hi, I figured out what’s going on. The thing is, these scripts won’t run from Mail’s script menu, which I believe is how you’re trying to use them. Instead, they have to be run from the Script Editor (or made into standalone apps).

   As far as I can tell, this is because my script needs access to the menubar, but if you run it from the Script menu, the menubar is already “busy” and can’t respond to another request. That’s just a guess; if someone else can figure this out I’d be interested to know.

   Anyway, for now you’ll have to make do with the minor inconvenience of having to run them from the Script Editor. At least until Mail puts a “rebuild” command in its scripting dictionary, that is!

   -Gabriel

9. Pierre Igot says:
   April 25th, 2004 at Apr 25, 04 | 10:42 pm

   Thanks Gabriel! It is indeed working properly when running from the Script Editor.

10. ssp says:
    April 25th, 2004 at Apr 25, 04 | 11:39 pm

    Pierre: Probably you can still run the script from the system-wide script menu rather than Mail’s built-in one.

    Just a thought.

11. Pierre Igot says:
    April 25th, 2004 at Apr 25, 04 | 11:47 pm

    Yup, it works from the system-wide script menu too… Thanks for the tip!

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