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All of a sudden tonight I get my email headings, but when I click on the email heading, there is no content. The dividing line between headers and content is also gone. I tried dragging it up from the bottom but that does nothing. Any ideas?

Update: I just noticed if I click on the heading, it opens up in a new window and I can read it. But I don't like it like that. I like my content to be right below the header like always.

Weird that you should ask, because I had one - first one ever - just like that today in Mail.app.

When I double-clicked on it it opened up as expected, displaying it's content.

So it happened to you, too? Maybe others too. If so, something glitchy going on. Let me know if you find a fix.

I wonder if I should rebuild my mailbox? I've never done it. The mail is supposed to disappear and then reappear after it's done rebuilding. Have you ever done that? It makes me nervous.

Never done it.

Have you tried shutting down/restarting?

Not until you mentioned it. I just did it and no difference. But now I don't have the left column that had all my folders on it where I store stuff like receipts.

Have you tried shutting down/restarting? [/quote]

[/quote]

Rita,

I had a grievous problem with Mail a few years ago (and yours sounds somewhat similar but not identical). Apple Tech Support took about an hour on the phone with me and ultimately solved it. The number is (800) 275-2273. Good luck!

Two comments:

• On the Mail Menu bar click on View > Use Column Layout to get back to what I think you are wanting. You can do all sorts of layout changes in the View menu.
• I have rebuilt the mailbox many times. In early days it was a commonly recommended "fix" for a variety of problems. it simply rebuilds the index to the mailbox database and should present no problems

I wonder if this is a clue to what may be going on. When I go to Mail - Accounts - and click on one of the email accounts I have, then click on "advanced" instead of going to the advanced page I get this message with each account I try: Advanced view[

When I did it (and AppleCare had expired), I was not charged. It would be worth a try.

Oh, thanks for letting me know. May I ask if they knew it had expired or they assumed you had it? That way I'll know what to say.

With the exception that I don't have a Mail.com account I get the same thing you do. All that tells you is the URL for the IMAP server you are suing for that particular email account and should have nothing to do with you your messages are displayed on your iMac.

To expand upon my previous statement:

• On your computer messages are stored as records in a database (like images in Photos and tunes in Music)
• Those records/messages are accessed via pointers in an index file
• When you rebuild a mailbox Mail reads the records in the database and creates a new index of the database contents
• It is possible that the old index has been damaged and may show a message record that is no longer present or may have lost a pointer to a message record that is in the database.
• As a result the new index may have fewer entries, more entries, or the same number of entries as the previous version but it does not change the actual content of the database so messages are neither gained or lost in the rebuild itself. Rather the new index correctly reflects reflects the actual database/mailbox contents.

They didn't ask and I didn't volunteer!

That is in the it can't hurt and it might help category. Try it and see what happens.

On the Mail menu bar under view there are two pertinent options Use Column Layout and Show Bottom Preview either or both may be on or off. I don't know exactly what you are looking for, but among the four possible combinations (both off, both on, only column layout on, only show bottom preview on) you should the able to achieve what you want.

At the very bottom of the message viewer window there is a pair of lines with a dot between them. Move your cursor over the dot and the cursor will turn into a short horizontal line with an arrow pointing up. Drag upward and once you've gone far enough (in my window it's a couple of inches) that dot and the pair of lines will jump up to create a message viewing area below, which will display whatever message is currently selected (or "No Message Selected" if none is).

(At first, I didn't think this worked anymore. My preference is the opposite of yours—I like the main Mail window to show only a list of emails and no preview. When I tried dragging up from the bottom nothing seemed to happen, but I found I just wasn't going far enough up.)

Since my mail program works fine on my alter ego account on Catalina, do you think upgrading to Monterey would help? I'm thinking maybe not since it doesn't seem to be a Catalina thing. I rebuilt my mail even though it didn't look like it was doing anything and reindexed it through onyX (Titanium). I wish I could ditch the mail app and redownload it, but I guess that's not possible.

I thought about just using my alter ego account since mail works there, but I tried to import bookmarks from my other account and it didn't work. I would like to have all the stuff on my regular account transferred to the other account and then I would be fine. But that's a lot of work and I'm not sure how to do it all. Anyway, what do you think? If upgrading to Monterey doesn't fix it, I'm sunk and I"ve lost some things that I like.

I could call Apple because sometimes they do help, but more than not, they do not. What about PRAM?