Column visibility and order is remembered on a per-mailbox basis for individual mailbox windows, and globally for the Mail Browser.

All mails are indexed in several ways, these indexes takes up extra space. If you got a large mailbox try compacting it (available from version 1.1). If you have done this and the mailbox seems to be unreasonable large it might be possible that you have a corrupt mailbox. Example: if you have a mailbox with 10 normal sized messages without any attachments and the mailbox is 4MB, then something is probably wrong. Try rebuilding it

As of version 1.5 rebuilding can only be done at startup, hold down alt-command when you start Mailsmith, select the mailboxes you want to rebuild and click the button.

Compact it (available in from version 1.1 in the "special" menu).

As of version 1.5 rebuilding can only be done at startup, hold down alt-command when you start Mailsmith, select the mailboxes you want to rebuild and click the button.

The mailboxes sometimes get currupted and you get some kind of error message when you try to view the content of the message. Sometimes the message is only listed as a blank line. In my experience this means that it's the index that is corrupted.

The first thing is to try a "Rebuild" (available from version 1.1) and if that doesn't work try exporting the emails, delete the mailbox and import them back.

As of version 1.5 rebuilding can only be done at startup, hold down alt-command when you start Mailsmith, select the mailboxes you want to rebuild and click the button.

It keeps track of the mailboxes Mailsmith uses. Without this file Mailsmith can't find any of its mailboxes ... so, don't delete it!!. Here is a comment from Stephen Peplaski ... NOTE I don't think you should try this unless absolutly neccessary (you may be lucky, but ...)

I recently (about 15 minutes ago) found that not only had my Incoming mailbox gotten corrupt, but so had my MailSmith Post Office file!

I have approximately 3000 archived email messages in over a dozen mailboxes. I had to keep them, but MailSmith would crash with a Type 2 error almost immediately upon launch (due to the corrupt files). I couldn't export my old email, I couldn't send any new email. I was stuck. I had to try something drastic to revive my email system. Here's what I found out...

You CAN delete the MailSmith Post Office file. True, you lose all of your old mailboxes, but you can bring them back. Here's how:

0. Make sure Mailsmith is not running.
1. Move the MailSmith Post Office file out of the MailSmith folder.
2. Move all of your other mailboxes to another folder and position them on the screen where you can see them while MailSmith is running.
3. Start MailSmith. It will create a new, empty Post Office.
4. Make new mailboxes, naming them exactly the same as the old ones (which you should be able to see from step 3)
5. Quit MailSmith.
6. Move the old mailboxes BACK INTO the MailSmith Data folder, REPLACING the new ones Mailsmith just made.
7. Start MailSmith - all your email will be back, filters and all!

Remember to make a backup of your MailSmith Data folder before attempting this, just in case.I successfully did this without consulting Bare Bones Software tech support. They are closed right now, And I couldn't wait for an email response. I just thought it might work, and it did!

Steph
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Stephen Peplaski
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No, don't do that ... at least not without getting in touch with support at BBSW ... however, here's a tip for the brave people but be warned, this may or may not work for you ... to be on the safe side contact the people at Bare Bones Software first.

v1.5 addition: the data folder is now a bundle. Unfortunately there is currently some bugs (OS X 10.1.3 is the current version when writing this) that can cause data loss when the file are manipulated from the Finder. BBSW has reported this bug to Apple

But once again: before doing anything from the Finder, please contact BBSW support for help.

Here are the instructions given for pre-1.5 versions: Sometimes the indexes in the "(incoming mail)" mailbox becomes corrupt and that mailbox can not be deleted from within Mailsmith, but Mailsmith automatically creates a new "(incoming mail)" mailbox when it's missing so you can try the following, on your own risk, but try Rebuild first. These are the instructions provided by Patrick Woolsey:

"... but when doing this procedure, please note that the following steps should be done, in order:

• [export or copy out messages you wish to preserve]
• quit Mailsmith
• throw the "(incoming mail)" mailbox (located inside the Mailboxes folder in the Mailsmith Data folder).
• Empty the Trash (very important that you do this to break the link to the existing mailbox incarnation)
• relaunch Mailsmith (at this time, a new incoming mailbox will be created)
• check & save any filters that refer to the "(incoming mail)" box (this should not absolutely be necessary, but is probably a good idea)
• proceed to download mail, etc.; things should be back to normal.

Finally, if you do encounter problems with any mailbox or other program operations, please contact support@barebones.com first, so that we candetermine whether this is an appropriate course of action."

No, but to cite Rich Siegel "but we do have in mind the future ability to 'adopt' mailbox files in the manner that you describe."

NO!!. Here is an explaination from the keyboard of Christian Smith at BBSW:

Due to a bug in Mailsmith 1.0, you can not safly just delete the (deleted mail) file the way you can the (incoming mail) file. However, you can do this:

0. Quit Mailsmith
1. Copy the Mailsmith app to another folder and launch it from there
2. Quit Mailsmith
3. Copy the newly created (deleted mail) file from the new Mailboxes folder to the old Mailboxes folder doing a "replace" of the old (deleted mail) file.
4. Launch Mailsmith from the old location.

You should now have an empty (and compact ;-) (trash) to which you should be able to drag messages.

There are two way of deleting messages: moving them to the trash (pressing the delete key) or deleting them directly without first moving them to the trash (pressing command-delete). Chances are that you have pressed command-delete to delete a message (in the Finder this moves a file to the trash) instead of just delete.

From version 1.1 "delete" and "command-delete" does the same thing, move to trash.

Answer by Rich Siegel:

When you delete messages from a mailbox, the corresponding database objects really are deleted - not just marked as such. The space formerly occupied by the message's component objects is added to an internal "free list", so that the space can be re-used later on.

Compacting a mailbox coalesces all of the free space to the end of the file, and then shortens the file accordingly.

So, "Empty & Compact Trash" will delete all of the messages from the Trash mailbox, and then reclaim the unused space.

Sometimes you might get an email that looks like this:

The reason why you don't see any attachment icon in the listing is that the "attachment" in question is probably an inline message part, not a true file attachment, and so isn't considered an enclosure. However, since the display code doesn't do inline MIME display, anything that can't be rendered as text will be listed in the Enclosures tab, giving rise to the observed situation.

In version 1.0.x there is nothing you can do about it, using version 1.1 you should be able to delete it

There is no built-in command of doing this but since this is Mailsmith it's of course possible to make a AppleScript to do it. Here is how to do it, described by Christian Smith at Bare Bones Software

Here is a script I just wrote in response to a customer request. The original request was to have Mailsmith be able to auto-delete messages in the trash which had been there longer than a certain date. This is a feature in Email and a few other clients which is missing (at present) from Mailsmith. This script if run on a regular basis will provide something akin to this by using the Notes field of messages in (trash).

The script as written will attempt to get the notes field of a message in the trash as a real number and will compare it against an offset from the current date. If the difference is more than 259200 (three days in seconds) the message will be deleted.

If the script can't get the notes as a real number it sets the notes field to the current offset from a given date.

The specific date being used "Thursday, March 04, 1993 12:10:00" is irrelevent to the script itself but holds a certain importance to the author.

If you run this script on a regular basis it will ensure that the trash doesn't pile up and start to smell ;-)

tell application "Mailsmith"
  set the_date to (current date) - 
    (date "Thursday, March 04, 1993 12:10:00")
  set the_list to every message of trash
  repeat with i from 1 to count items of the_list
    set the_message to item i of the_list
    try
      set date_stamp to get notes of the_message as real 
    on error
      set date_stamp to the_date
      set notes of the_message to date_stamp
    end try
    set the_age to the_date - date_stamp
    if the_age > 3 * 24 * 60 * 60 then delete the_message
  end repeat
end tell

Version 1.5 works a bit different and the script above doesn't work. Instead use this repeat loop instead of the one above, Tom Robinson has submitted the correction

repeat with i from 1 to c
  set the_message to item i of the_list
  set thenotes to get notes of the_message
    
  if thenotes is "" then
    set date_stamp to the_date
    set notes of the_message to date_stamp
  else
    set date_stamp to get notes of the_message as real
  end if
      
  set the_age to the_date - date_stamp
  if the_age > 60 * days then delete the_message
end repeat

Yes, you can delete them by opening the enclosre tab, select the enclosures, and press the delete key. It's also possible to use an AppleScript

One reason is that you might be trying to compact a v1.0 mailbox which has some data that can't be reclaimed. Try Rebuild or export/import and create a new mailbox.

As of version 1.5 rebuilding can only be done at startup, hold down alt-command when you start Mailsmith, select the mailboxes you want to rebuild and click the button.

If you try this on mailboxes that was created with v1.1 nothing is going to happen since they do not use v1.0 headers.

Sorry, but you can't. BBSW has said that they are looking into this for a future version.

This should vork fine from version 1.5

It means that you have an unread message with the priority "Urgent" in that mailbox.

This is perfectly normal, Mailsmith doesn't use the file name as the name of the mailbox. The file keeps the name you gave it when it was created but inside Mailsmith you can change it as many times you like.

By Rich Siegel:

As a side note, rebuilding a mailbox should only be done in one of a small number of well-defined circumstances:

• there are frank symptoms of mailbox corruption: blank lines in message lists, errors trying to move messages to or from that particular mailbox, or other aberrent behavior in connection with that mailbox.
• if an explicit Compact of a mailbox fails, Rebuild can be used to compact and repair that mailbox.
• if a "Reclaim Header Space" fails (itself an indication of damage in a mailbox left over from 1.0/1.0.1), Rebuild can be used to reclaim the space.

Using Rebuild for any other reason is usually not necessary and a waste of time.

Yes, MacOS has a limit on 348 open files at the same time. If you have a large number of mailboxes and/or are running other applications that open a large number of files you could get some error messages from MacOS. BBSW are considering different ways of fixing this problem.
See also a TechNote from Apple

This limit only applies to versions before MacOS 9.

Put this script in Mailsmiths shutdown folder (available from version 1.1.1)

Sometimes a mailbox gets some strange name, like "#8 u09", but everything seems to work as usual. How to fix this? The answer is simple: Nothing. This "feature" is purely cosmetic and you can just leave it, it will fix itself sooner or later.

Note: I don't think I've seen this problem since 2001 or earlier