Mac Forum / Applications / Eudora / March 2004

I've been using Eudora 5.0.1 (sponsored) with OS X 10.2.3 in Classic
mode. Since my move up to OS X, this program has continued to perform
very well. Then suddenly this morning--without warning, as usual--I was
faced with a dire situation, i.e.,  being unable to send mail. I was
told that "the mailbox doesn't exist" or something to that effect.
Essentially, Eudora suddenly could not find its Out mailbox.

I looked in the Eudora "Mail Folder", and I was able to see the
"Out.toc" file, which  contained about 1 MB of data, but there was no
trace of the Out mailbox. After fiddling and diddling for a while, I
tried to move a copy of a backup ("Out" file) into the Mail Folder, in
order to replace the missing mailbox. I found that this was not
permitted, which led me to suspect that _something_ was there in the
Eudora Mail folder--something that I couldn't see. So, I did a search
for an *invisible* file with the filename of "Out". This search turned
up Eudora's elusive (invisible) mailbox, but lo and behold, the file
appeared to be merely an alias for the Out mailbox. But wait--there's
more: the Get Info for this "alias"  had no path for the original file
and it  showed a filesize of 11 MB. That's strange for an alias. So, I
proceeded on the assumption that my problem was caused by the Out
mailbox file having both its visibility and its alias flags/attributes
incorrectly set (corrupted).

To make a long story short, I used a utility to change the visibility
of the corrupted mailbox file. So, now I had a _visible_ mailbox
"alias". With some effort on Google's part, I located another utility
("Mac Explorer 3.6"), which had the capability of toggling the "alias"
attribute on/off. So of course I toggled it to off. Then I restarted
Eudora and bingo! The "Out" mailbox was back (of course I needed to
create a new toc), and what's more all the 11 MB of contents appear to
be intact. Yes, I know I'm long overdue for some housekeeping.

I suppose this situation might be a 1 in a million case (or perhaps
it's so common that it's been discussed to death in this NG), but on
the odd chance that it's likely to happen to others, i thought I'd pass
along my experience.

BTW, that very useful little "Mac Explorer 3.6" utility is at
http://www.ragesw.com/explorer.php

Phil