Errors•Mac•Tips and Tricks

Mail has undone actions on some messages – Apple’s Mail Program

December 30, 2007 by Ian Brown 82 Comments

In Leopard, when you go offline while using Apple’s Mail program with an IMAP account, you may get the following error message, or something similar:

â€œSome actions taken while the account â€œxxxxxxxâ€ was offline could not be completed online.

Mail has undone actions on some messages so that you can redo the actions while online. Mail has saved other messages in mailbox â€œApple Mail To Doâ€ in â€œOn My Macâ€ so that you can complete the actions while online.

Additional information: The IMAP command â€œAPPENDâ€ (to Apple Mail To Do) failed with server error: Invalid mailbox name..â€

And if you click OK enough times, the program crashes.

There are two ways to correct this problem (both ways will preserve your mail settings (you will NOT have to reconfigure your Mail program) and your mail will appear in a few seconds after first opening the Mail program after performing the fix below):

1st Way (easier way)

1. Make sure your Mail program is closed
2. Open Macintosh HD (double-click on it)
3. Select your Home folder (it will be on left nav bar with the picture of a house)
4. On the right side of the window, double-click on the “Library” folder (to open the folder)
5. Double-click on the “Mail” folder
6. Remove (move to the trash) the “IMAP-youremailaddress@here.com” folder
7. Close everything and open Mail to confirm it has been fixed

2nd Way

Delete all entries in~/Library/Mail/IMAP-email_address@mailserver/.OfflineCache . The folder is actually only accessible in shell since its a hidden directory, so you will need to access it via Terminal. This is for advanced users only, so I won’t bother writing a step-by-step instruction, as those users will know how to do it.

Written by Ian Brown

Ian has been involved with computers since very young. He took his first computer class when he was just 8 years old. He always had an affinity for computers, but never really took it seriously. It was not until he graduated from college and experienced the real world for a while did he realize that computers may be where his talent and passion lie. He has since branched out into Internet marketing and LOVES it. He currently resides in Los Angeles where he services clients ranging from residential to small business to celebrities.

82 Comments

Mark Malson January 4, 2008 at 10:02 am

Thanks loads! I was pulling my hair out over this and your 2nd way was the only thing that worked for me. I almost switched back to Entourage over this…
brendan January 27, 2008 at 3:08 pm

Thanks a lot, exactly what I needed!
Ian Brown January 27, 2008 at 7:54 pm

Great. Glad to help.
ray February 7, 2008 at 2:02 pm

Thank you!
Jack February 8, 2008 at 9:15 am

I deleted the folder but still had the issue. It turned out there were a few mails in my Draft folder that had attachments over a GB. (I copied the file names from the Finder and thought I was only pasting the names. When in fact, I was attaching the whole QT. I corrected it in the email immediately but the damage had been done in my Drafts folder.) So before I quit Mail, I had to go offline and delete all the offending drafts. After that, I followed the directions above and I’m back on track.

Thanks for the info.
Peter Aitkens February 10, 2008 at 4:42 am

Please award yourself at least four attaboys! It is just so good when you find someone who a: Understands the problem and b: Provides a solution that even I can understand. Thank you.
Mark March 8, 2008 at 12:06 pm

Thank you so much. I’d been struggling with this problem for over a month, and could find no mention of the problem on Apple’s site.

BTW you should know that googling: “mail has undone actions on some messages so that you can redo the actions while online” leads directly to you.
Barbara April 13, 2008 at 3:41 pm

Thank you so much. I can’t believe I actually managed to fix the problem! You instructions were superbly clear. Thank you for writing in normal words instead of geek!
Simon May 12, 2008 at 3:55 pm

THANK YOU SO MUCH.
It worked for me:-)
David McMillen May 14, 2008 at 2:53 pm

I’ll add my thanks to the chorus: Thanks! This was great, I got this bizarre error suddenly today, and Google led me right to you. It’s much appreciated.
Aaron June 5, 2008 at 6:32 pm

Thanks for publishing this. It helped a lot.
richo June 28, 2008 at 8:19 am

Thank you, thank you, thank you !!!!
I spend 2 days searching the net and there was no help except from you !!!
You made my day :-)
Bill Carozza June 29, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Great fix!! Thank you Ian-you have down a great service.
Thomas July 16, 2008 at 10:17 pm

THANKS, THANKS, THANKS!!! I had the same error but not with gmail… wit my own server, I tried everything! but finally this helped. I don’t believe that the people of apple haven’t fixed this, and now that we are in Mac OS X 10.5.4!
kevin July 17, 2008 at 11:22 pm

thanks been stuck on that for ages, you legend you, very easy even for me!
Kishi July 31, 2008 at 4:47 am

What a great EASY fix….
Thanks to Matt as well for the idea of using the finder instead of terminal.

Saved me hours possibly days more of frustration with mail!

Thanks again
Chad Perkins August 11, 2008 at 6:59 pm

Holy cow. I love you. Your fix worked for me as well. Thank you so much for donating your time to free help for us all!! *headache goes away*
Jeanne Muir August 12, 2008 at 12:18 pm

I have a compounding problem. I have three IMAP accounts, one from an old domain pointing to another newer domain. However, I have FOUR of the IMAP folders in the library>mail> IMAP … folders.
Two are clearly the suspects. They are:
1. old-domain-email@old domain @ mail.newdomain
2. newdomain-email@newdomain@mail.olddomain

I am not certain which to delete, and wonder if I can delete both of them with no ill effects? Can you tell me exactly what the file folder name should look like?

Compounding this is that my timemachine is not operating properly (thank you, time capsule) so I feel especially vulnerable if all my mail were to be affected.
Ian Brown August 13, 2008 at 12:29 pm

Hello Jean,

Sorry to hear you’re having such problems. Just delete both of them. The IMAP folders that it needs will be rebuilt automatically when you start Mail again.

The great thing about having it set up via IMAP is that you will not lose any email. All of your email is still on your mail servers. You are just viewing it via the Mail program.

Also, with regard to your Time Capsule issue, I’m not sure what issues you’re having, but sometimes when you reboot the Time Capsule, you have to connect to it again, as it gets disconnected.

To do this, simply open a finder window (click on Finder in the bottom left of your screen), select your Time Capsule (which should be listed on the left side of the finder window), click the CONNECT AS button in the upper right corner of the finder window, and then enter your Time Capsule’s password to connect to it again.

After that, you can just go up to the Time Machine menu in the top right section of your screen, to the left of the clock, and select “Backup Now.”

If that does not work, go up to that menu again, go to the Time Machine preferences, click “Change Disk,” and then select your Time Capsule again. Then close that, go up to the Time Machine menu again, and select “Backup Now.”

Hope that helps!
Jeanne Muir August 13, 2008 at 1:56 pm

Thank you. I ended up going in to the genius bar today since I could not work, and so they solved it before I tried your method. Your explanation, however, is so clear and concise.

As for the timecapsule, when I do reconnect on it and click to see contents, it shows sparsebundles for each of the four machines that should be backing up, including mine and my server, but they don’t open for me. I cannot see them in the desktop/time machine format. AND, my sparsebundle has 105 GB of apparent backups in it. Will I lose those by just doing the “change disk” maneuver, and configuring again?

I also cannot see my SERVER timecapsule backups from any of the machines including the server keyboard. What simple thing am I completely missing here?

So, just to say it another way, two of my laptops are time machining for their local files, but have no access to the server time machine backups. the third laptop has lost its configuration, can however see the sparsebundles for all four but cannot connect to its backup nor the server’s.

And, again, thank you!
Ian Brown August 16, 2008 at 8:17 pm

Hi. Sorry for the delay. First, you can not just open the sparsebundles manually. You can only view each backup from its respective computer by clicking on Time Machine in the Dock or in the Applications folder of that computer.

Secondly, when you connected to the Time Capsule again, did you try just backing up right after you reconnected instead of changing the disk?
David Henderson November 6, 2008 at 4:25 am

Thank you SOOO much.

Some you understands the problem and gives clear instructions on how to fix it!

I’ll be taking a note of your website.
Frustrated No More December 22, 2008 at 8:17 pm

I found your .OfflineCache ip on another site and had to come here and thank you for it. I really didn’t want to just delete my whole folder (it seemed stupid and like using a sledgehammer instead of a tweezer. anyway – thank you.
Audrey February 13, 2009 at 12:19 pm

I think it worked!! Thank you, thank you! My mail was on the gerbil wheel of that stupid error message followed by a billion “drafts.” Ugh!!
Ian Brown February 13, 2009 at 6:04 pm

LOL. Glad I could help you, Frustrated No More. Sledgehammer vs. a tweezer. Funny.

Great, Audrey! My pleasure. ;)
Kay February 17, 2009 at 5:46 am

I tried doing the first way and its still not working. I’m using a .mac email account. for some reason I’m not seeing the IMAP-youremailaddress@here.com to delete…and it feels like my computer is moving 1000 times slower because of this…is it something im not seeing?
Stefanie February 19, 2009 at 4:28 pm

Thanks Ian!! Saved the day and made me look like I’m brilliant to my co-workers – thanks a bunch.
D February 24, 2009 at 12:22 pm

I am having the same issue as Kay…no option for the IMAP-youremailaddress@here.com to delete. Please help.
Matthew February 25, 2009 at 2:44 pm

Thanks. This was a lifesaver!
shawn giese February 26, 2009 at 11:07 am

thanks, helped me too.
Ashley M March 2, 2009 at 10:18 am

Thanks that helped alot. btw can u help me with this other problem?…
I have a mac, with leopard installed. And i use MSN all the time. And when i’m chatting online i can’t seem to chat message after message. What happens is the IM box thing greys out everytime i enter a message to my friend. So i ALWAYS have to click on it again n again EVERYTIME i enter a new message to the same person i’m talking to. its REALLY annoying. Didn’t used to happen, just started happening last week. ALSO at the same time my Hotmails been f*cking about too. The site works fine and it gets me into my Inbox fine, but then apart from that nothing works. No other links work. Junk, Reply, Delete…nothing works. And i can’t get into my emails or that eithers. So do u know wots going on? I tried contacting Microsoft but havent got replied to :(
plgx March 4, 2009 at 2:09 pm

I had found a fix just before reading yours (rm-ing the .OfflineCache/ folder). It worked in the sense that I was able to receive mail again. However, my drafts folder still has the file (five times) that caused the original problem, and not even with your fix have I managed to delete them. Any ideas?
ryu March 8, 2009 at 11:52 pm

Yes, second method worked for me. Thanks much.
plgx March 9, 2009 at 1:35 pm

The problem is I don’t seem to have the .OfflineCache directory anymore (since I deleted it with rm -r, and now it doesn’t appear anymore when I do an ls -a inside the ~/Library/Mail/IMAP-email_address@mailserver/ directory). Thanks a lot for your help.
Sam Harding March 16, 2009 at 12:36 am

Good post. As always you give a refreshing view on the subject, I always make a point of checking this blog and your feed.
Heiko Behrens April 27, 2009 at 2:56 pm

thanks a lot! You are my rescue!
Richard Shephard April 29, 2009 at 1:54 am

Oh well done you. Have a cookie. Thanks a million for your first method, which worked straight away.
Tanja Jewell May 2, 2009 at 2:57 am

A big giant THANK YOU!!
jon May 13, 2009 at 9:05 am

You’re the man! thx alot.
Gavin Wye May 21, 2009 at 1:55 am

Thanks Ian .
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[…] Mail has undone actions on some messages – Apple’s Mail Program | ianbrown.cc Apple mail error fix (tags: apple mail error) […]
joe nguyen May 27, 2009 at 1:36 am

It would be nice to see more of this.
Santiago Lema June 1, 2009 at 12:15 am

Thanks *a lot* for this. I got this issue after transfering loads of e-mail from my previous account using pop to IMAP on gmail and your second solution solved it in a matter of seconds.
Chadhurbhujaya July 1, 2009 at 1:09 am

I usually don?t post in Blogs but your blog forced me to, amazing work.. beautiful ?
alexandra July 9, 2009 at 1:14 am

to be honest i still don’t know what the problem was or what your solution fixed but I, like everyone else, googled “Some actions taken while the account “Gmail 2” was offline could not be completed online.” and found you. It is fixed, I GOT MAIL so a huge THANKS Ian.

I do have a small question re pop and imap – let me know if you don’t mind answering and I will see if I am able to put into words what I would like to understand – thanks again
Anthea July 16, 2009 at 6:55 pm

THANK YOU! Very clear and saved my laptop from being hurled out the window…!
Ian Brown July 21, 2009 at 5:58 pm

Sorry for the delay, Alexandra. Been busy with other projects. Let me know what your question is. Just in case I can save time, the main difference between POP and IMAP is that with POP, you are actually downloading the email to your computer, whereas with IMAP, you are simply VIEWING the email on your mail server via your email software program.

So, with POP, if you have it set to delete your email on the mail server (where your email first goes when it is sent to you) after you retrieve it, then if something happens to your computer, you lose your email.

However, you can set your email client (software program) to either leave a copy on the server or leave a copy on on the server for so many days. That way if something happens, you still have your email (but NOT your sent mail), or at least you have it for a certain amount of time if you opt to have it delete your email after a certain amount of days.

With IMAP, you are VIEWING your email on your mail server (where your email is stored on the Internet). When you download and read it (usually you have to click “get entire message” to be able to read the whole email or to be able to open any attachments, because it only downloads the first 20k worth of data), it is still on the mail server safe and sound. The only way it will no longer be on the server is if you delete it.

Hope that helps, but if it doesn’t, what’s your question?
Rob in Devon September 1, 2009 at 12:43 pm

Wonderful. Thanks for posting
Joy October 14, 2009 at 11:48 am

Thank you so much. I thought I was going to the looney house it was driving me crazy.
Commission Blueprint Scam November 4, 2009 at 6:35 pm

It’s so hard to find good information these days, I have read a few of your posts and I am very impressed with your site. Thanks