Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Mail Icons duplicated in Dock

I have a friend in another city who has an iMac 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Duo and he's running OSX V10.5.8.

I am acting as an intermediary because he has MS, so coming to FTM and writing long explanations would be a challenge. It will work better if I have phone conversations with him and come back here with questions.

Recently his Dock has decided to generate second icons. That is, he booted his machine and found two Mail icons in the Dock. They each had some of his email - one had three of his messages and the other had two.

He moved them all into one Mail program by dragging from the Inbox window of one into the Inbox window of the second. After he read them he tried to delete them. However, the messages disappeared but the header and subject line et cetera remain and do not seem to be deletable.

Any thoughts?

ryck

> Recently his Dock has decided to generate second icons. That is, he booted his machine and found two Mail icons in the Dock. They each had some of his email - one had three of his messages and the other had two.

Are we talking about only a second Dock icon, or has your friend somehow acquired a second installation of Mail.app and/or its associated Application Support and/or Mail folders and/or plist(s) (in /Users/Your short name/Library/...)?

> However, the messages disappeared but the header and subject line et cetera remain and do not seem to be deletable.

Perhaps because he tried to delete them from the wrong...uhhh...you get the point.

If he hasn't tried shutting down his Mac and restarting since this happened, now may be a good time to do so.

It's most likely just a second Dock icon. The likelihood of a second installation is very slim but I will check. He has only one com.apple.mail.plist

I thought about trashing the plist but that would require re-entering all his mail server information and I'm not sure where that's located, so that it can be recorded first.


He would have had all the emails in one place and tried to delete from that window. Do you mean he might have assembled them in the wrong window - that one is preferable over the other? If so, how is the correct window determined?

Perhaps I should get him to delete the existing Dock icon and create a new one.


That's happened a few times. He waited a few days before contacting me. Right now I have him doing a Permissions Repair - which he has never done.

ryck

Are you sure there were two Mail icons when Mail was closed?

The account server information is found in Mail > Preferences > Accounts and the password will be found in Keychain Access. However for a .Mac account Mail will fill in all the setup information automatically. Assuming he is using .Mac as an IMAP account, the default, all you need to know to set it up is the eMail address and password.

I don't know the answer but will check - likely later today. I've tried the phone a couple of times but he is out.


Thanks. I assume then that replacing the plist is a good start.

Quick question....it turns out he is still running Tiger only because he's never thought about having his machine other than the way it came. I believe he could benefit from moving up to Snow Leopard and wonder: "Will a progression to a more up-to-date OS remove the problem?"

That is, will the newer OS look at the icon situation while installing, determine that it's wrong, and automatically take remedial action?

If so, is there a simple upgrade route? I've been to the App Store but it only seems to want to generate information that would apply to my machine.

ryck

I've just been on the phone and the answer is that one icon was removed from the Dock after the messages were consolidated into one Inbox window. Therefore, there was one icon when mail was closed.

New Wrinkle: It turns out the icon duplication is not restricted to Mail. This morning, when my friend booted up, he had two Safari icons. He got rid of one by opening and closing Safari until one icon disappeared.

We have a bit of time as my friend is going to be away from tomorrow until Monday.

ryck

It might be informative to use "Show in Finder" (from the Options submenu of each Dock icon) to find out where those apps live. My guess is he's launching extra copies from another boot volume (possibly a backup volume).

I will check (it may not be before next week), although I tend to doubt that's the case. In our conversation today I asked him about his back-up procedures (thinking we might be able to do something with Time Machine or a Clone) and he responded that he doesn't have any kind of back-up.

I told him we will be having a chat about that topic.

ryck

Is there a way to see that information without a two-button mouse?


I will check (it may not be before next week), although I tend to doubt that's the case. In our conversation today I asked him about his back-up procedures (thinking we might be able to do something with Time Machine or a Clone) and he responded that he doesn't have any kind of back-up.

I told him we will be having a chat about that topic.

ryck

Yes. Either click on the dock icon in question and keep the mouse button depressed until the popup menu appears, or do a Control-click for the same.

Has your friend tried logging in to a test user account to see if his issue follows him?

Thank-you. That will be very helpful.


Without talking to him I am quite certain that he will not have used a test account as his knowledge is limited. It's a good idea and I will add it to the things I need to walk him through.

I have confirmation that I will not talk with him before next Tuesday as he and his wife have headed out on a brief trip.

ryck

The messages are now deleted. I asked my friend to try Command-X on each one and that did it.


I just got off the phone and there aren't any duplicate icons today. However, I explained how to see "Show in Finder" and he did it on the existing Safari and Mail icons - both are in the Applications Folder.

When a duplicate shows up again he'll use "Show in Finder" and let me know what he sees.

ryck

Make sure he knows to check which Applications folder they're in. One concern is that they may be coming from an Applications folder from another disk volume. (Or maybe even from ~/Applications.)

It won't be another disk as he doesn't have one - even for backup. The importance of backup is a discussion I'm having with him.

What's ~/Applications ?

ryck

The ~ refers to a User's Home folder. An Applications folder there is non-standard and different from the main one at the root level of your HD.

Each user can have their own Applications folder in their home folder, where they can put their own personal applications. (Non-admins, for example, can download and install applications there. No admin password needed, because it affects only the one user.)

Actually, applications can be installed anywhere. The system will automatically search /Applications (where most applications are stored and where all users have access to them) and ~/Applications (one for each user, for that user's personal use), and any subfolders of either of those. It also automatically searches /System/Library/CoreServices for applications. You can think of those as the "standard" application folders.

If an application is ever run from another folder, that folder is also searched for applications, which will be added to the list of "known" applications. Double-clicking a document causes the system to look for a matching application among the currently known applications.

One way to get a non-standard Applications folder would be to duplicate /Applications. That's pointless, but something an unsophisticated user could easily do, and would result in that user having duplicates of all their applications, all seeming to be "in the Applications folder" if they don't look closely enough to notice that it's not "the" Applications folder.

If a user uses "Show in Finder" from a Dock icon to see where an application lives, it's not enough to see that it's in a folder named "Applications". They should check the full path, for example by command-clicking on the folder's proxy icon in the title bar of the window. The menu that pops up should contain only: "Applications"/<boot volume name>/<computer name>. Or the user could use Finder's View->Show Path Bar menu command, and see that the full path is <boot volume name> -> Applications.