Mac Forum / Applications / Eudora / February 2008

I've been reading about a set of problems, posted in diverse places,
all arising since Leopard (or since an update),
which all involve loss of the information
in mailbox Tables Of Contents (TOC),
which nowadays default to residing
in the resource fork of mailboxes, instead of in separate files.

All of the problems that have been described
might have a single cause, which sounds very much as if
the Table of Contents in the resource fork of a mailbox
is not being updated in sync with the main data fork.

Few programs would require these to be in perfect sync,
but Eudora is one which is critically dependent upon this.

If that suspicion is correct, it might pay to try using separate files
for the TOC components of mailboxes, as was once the only way,
and then see whether these phenomena are tamed -- at the same time,
this option allows any corrupt TOC to be deleted and rebuilt at any time.

I don't recall whether changing this option causes TOC rebuilding
in the first place, or whether it manages to copy existing
resource fork data to the separate file (if the former,
then the status info will be lost initially anyway, this one time).

If anyone does try this approach,
a report of results will no doubt be invaluable to all.

A complete backup of one's Eudora data folder prior to
any such significant change might of course be prudent.

--