The dreaded “your home directory is full” error
I just noticed three searches for this error message this morning, and I’ve not blogged it before. Oddly.
If the Mail.app database that indexes your emails becomes corrupt, you may see the following error message when you try to open Mail.app:
“Mail cannot update your mailboxes because your home directory is full. You must free up space in your home folder before using Mail. Delete unneeded documents or move documents to another volume.”
It actually has nothing to do with the amount of space on your harddisk and it’s not hard to fix.
- Quit Mail.
- Navigate to your ~/Library/Mail folder.
- Move the file called “Envelope Index” to your Desktop. It’s an SQLite databse—see “What’s in your Mail folder?” (maybe after you’ve finished).
- Launch Apple Mail. It will prompt you to “import” your mailboxes, although it is really just rebuilding its index. Select OK.
- Mail.app will rebuild and re-index the messages and create a new copy of the Envelope Index file.
- When you are sure that everything is working properly again, you can delete the old Envelope Index file on your Desktop.
Bob’s your uncle.
Tags: Apple Mail, Apple Mail Tips, corrupt, database, envelope.index, error message, home directory is full, mail.app, mailboxesRelated posts
February 1st, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Thanks for this tip — this problem has been showing up on my powerbook for the past month and I had yet to find a solution.
Cheers.
February 1st, 2006 at 1:18 pm
[...] How to handle the dreaded “your home directory is full” error in Mail.app [...]
February 1st, 2006 at 7:52 pm
Cris: You don’t actually say so, but I am hoping that it worked!
I’ve had the same problem once or twiceon my powerbook as well.
February 3rd, 2006 at 7:51 am
Thanks for the tip. worked like a charm…..
February 3rd, 2006 at 6:32 pm
Yes — the solution worked great! Thanks again
February 11th, 2006 at 8:16 am
The solution worked insofar as my mail works again, but where did all my messages go? I actually had 2 Envelope Index files as well as 2 Envelope Index journals (the seconds had the _1 suffixes). I put all 4 on my desktop and created a new one by starting up mail again. Can you tell me how to get my messages back?
Thanks!
February 12th, 2006 at 12:40 pm
Stan: Hmmm…. OK. That’s unexpected. The reindexing and rebuilding should have been done as part of the “import” process in Step 5.
What happens if you manually rebuild the mailboxes (Highlight the mailbox you want to rebuild, then select Rebuild from the Mailbox menu)?
March 22nd, 2006 at 8:13 am
THANKS! This saved my ass. Well, my Mail’s ass.
April 19th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
This solution worked for me, too. Thanks very much. A successful end to a very frustrating day of trouble-shooting. Only problem was that I had deleted the preference file thinking it might have been the culprit. So the mail imported fine, but I had to rebuild my accounts and preferences. Minor problem easily tolerated after major problem solved. Thanks again.
June 12th, 2006 at 11:50 pm
Thank you. It worked. I did not find this note first. The first note just said move Mail to the desktop and start over. I did that. It was going to work but then I found this note. So I move the new Mail to ~/Desktop/Mail-2 and move the old Mail back, deleted the Envelopes and started Mail. It worked and worked and finally told me that my envelope database had been corrupted, please quit mail and start again.
So I did and it seems happy now.
My question: I have a subscription to gcc and it has 5000 mail messages in that folder. I keep that folder on my server. Could that be a problem? How big can a folder get? I would hope it is well over 5000 messages. But I could sub-divide it by months if necessary. May be more convenient anyway.
Thank you again. I guess Blogging isn’t so silly after all.
June 13th, 2006 at 8:35 am
Hi Perry. I don’t think that the numbers you mention should be a problem. My largest mailbox has 22,117 messages and many of mine contain 3,000+, all of them working fine.
Apple’s own technote
suggests a limit of 2GB, although the true functional limit is somewhere beneath that.
June 16th, 2006 at 4:00 am
Thanks very much. Your solution worked except for one thing. All my mailboxes re; smart folders are gone. Any suggestions?
Thanks very much.
Errol F.
Toronto, Canada
June 24th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
Great, Simple and Direct Instructions to solve this problem.
Congratulations and Thanks!!
July 7th, 2006 at 4:43 pm
Thanx very much! It works!
July 23rd, 2006 at 11:05 am
Thank you - didn’t work at first, but then I moved the “Envelope Index Journal” as well then it worked as you describe. The problem occured after a data recovery (bad hard drive, swap data onto new one), re-install of 10.4, then software update to 10.4.7.
August 16th, 2006 at 8:57 am
THANK YOU EVER SO MUCH!
September 14th, 2006 at 4:08 am
Thanks, found you via Google, and it works!
Panic over. :)
September 19th, 2006 at 3:01 am
who’s bob?
September 19th, 2006 at 3:03 am
p.s.
you’ll be happy to know this tip works in leopard as well. per anne’s ammendment or whatever.
September 23rd, 2006 at 1:05 am
Thanks SOOOO much! You really saved my day!!!!
October 6th, 2006 at 9:45 am
Hi, i just did this because i had the mail problem, and now when i open a message it says “cannont show ….. message until you take this mailbox online” however it checks mail in that mailbox fine
October 30th, 2006 at 9:06 pm
Robert is indeed my mother’s brother :)
Fantastic, thanks.
October 31st, 2006 at 12:08 am
oh ok good… i just wanted to be sure he wasn’t indeed my mother’s or father’s brother or anything… whew!
November 16th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Thanks. Rebuild is in process.
December 9th, 2006 at 3:10 am
This tip was much appreciated!
February 9th, 2007 at 12:44 am
So what happens when you get a parameter error 50 when you try to move / delete / rename the index file?
I can’t alter the file location at all…. Any suggestions?
February 9th, 2007 at 8:40 am
Jon, I’m not an expert on this kind of thing, but I read on the Apple Discussions that this problem cna occur with Finder in 10.4.x
Would you be comfortable move the file via the Terminal?
May 5th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Sorry to say that my problem could not be fixed in this way. I did not get an error message at all, instead Mail simply stopped showing the messages in a mailbox. It started with some IMAP boxes on the server (with some curious results such as “0 mesagges, 6 unread”), but now even spread to local boxes and another inbox on a POP account.
At first, a simple restart of Mail would do, but after a while the problem got worse. I tried rebuilding individual mailboxes, also tried the chuck-the-envelope approach, but nothing seems to fix it. Size may be an issue (total of ~12000 messages worth 1 GB), but seems to be below what was mentioned in this thread.
Any ideas?
June 4th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
Thanks Man you saved my sanity. My wife thx you!!
July 23rd, 2007 at 3:13 am
Thanks. Solved my problem. (Found this solution via Google.)
August 16th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
The tip partly saved me. I moved the envelope, started Mail.app, rebuilt… and now I found at least 1 messages that is messed. It’s an old message from a mailinglist so looking at the web archive I know it’s dated 2006, but I see it as a message received yesterday, has no sender and part of the message is missing.
Any ideas? I already checked new mail, should I remove the Envelope again and try to rebuild?
November 3rd, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Thanks for information. Did the trick.
November 8th, 2007 at 10:41 pm
Thanks for this! Worked like a charm.
November 12th, 2007 at 8:00 am
Another thankful reader writes to say it worked like a charm!
(I did believe the original notice and emptied a lot of material from my e-mails that probably should have been discarded long ago–)
December 21st, 2007 at 2:32 am
Yay! Thanks!
Now if only Apple would fix this…
April 4th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
did as suggested, but mail keeps quitting - had to do it several times in the past, but this time it’s a no go. May have to switch to Entourage :( - any other suggestions?
May 14th, 2008 at 5:21 am
It worked. But the real root of the problem is…why the F does it do this?
This is only a bandaid solution folks. The good old days of Eudora Light…
never ever a problem, never a corrupt file and it still receives email on one of my older Macs. Lovin the Eudora!…the Eudora’s rockin’…Eudoras the Angelina to Mail’s Ugly Betty.
booya kasha.
June 4th, 2008 at 4:41 am
Thanks a million. You just saved the Beagle Project imac going out the window.
June 4th, 2008 at 9:05 am
Excellent! That sounds like a good cause ;-)
June 4th, 2008 at 10:48 am
Okay…I removed the Envelope Index file, but when continue with the good man’s suggestion’s above, I get nowhere. Mail actually just stops dead.
Can anyone tell me how to delete emails WITHOUT opening up Mail? Mail won’t open for me anymore, ‘cos I get the Home directory is full message…so how do I free up some memory, without opening Mail?
Appreciate an email direct to me at:
Adrian@wave947.fm
Cheers
Ps: bring back Eudora Light!
June 25th, 2008 at 6:12 am
Excellent! Thanks for the simple tip to bring back Mail.
July 8th, 2008 at 9:43 pm
To stop the “Dreaded” I have performed this operation before and it seemed to help for a while. It’s back…! Why do I have 6 envelope index files in the Library? Should I remove them all?
July 29th, 2008 at 9:52 am
Grazie mille! It worked! It took an extra step–relaunching Mail after rebuild brought on a message that something was damaged and it would now rebuild but, reassuringly, would save all my data…so then it proceeded to rebuild yet again, and the second time it worked. Yea! Now I can delete my Thunderbird download, which wouldn’t import my Mail messages & folders & prefs anyway…