Several Hawk Wings readers have asked if the very successful trick of speeding up Mail.app by “vacuuming” the Envelope Index still works in Leopard.

I figured that there was only one way to find out.

I have no knowledge at all of SQL or the technical aspects of the management of data in relational database systems, and my post should be read in that light. However, I also have no fear, because I have backups.

So, as a lack of fear naturally produces recklessness, I decided to use the biggest weapon in the arsenal first. I quit Mail, made a copy of the Envelope Index file in my ~/Library/Mail folder by dragging it to the Desktop. Then I deleted the original in my Mail folder and started up Mail again.

It imported all the messages (with several heart-stopping pauses) and things looked good. The Envelope Index file was reduced from 37.4MB to 24.8MB.

However, doing it this way had two unpleasant side-effects, one of which I expected and one not. Mail then wants to re-cache all your IMAP messages and attachments. Even with ADSL2+ this takes a long time.

Secondly, the rebuilding somehow “broke” the syncing of to-dos between Mail and iCal. Mail told me that they were out of sync and asked if I preferred the list from Mail.app or from iCal. With iCal syncing in its current unworkable state, this lead to many opportunities for contemplating the spinning rainbow-coloured mandala of karmic retribution.

But eventually all was well, and Mail did feel faster. Then I tried with the Terminal commands. This was faster and resulted in a further small reduction. But it broke the to-do syncing as well.

Rumours suggest that the 10.5.1 update has already been released to developers for testing, and that it will fix many of the things which currently afflict users of minor, peripheral apps like Mail and iCal, including the stability of syncing. Perhaps it would be smart to wait until 10.5.1 is out and then try this.

In the meantime, I hope that someone smarter than me will tell me why this breaks the syncing of to-dos. Just for curiosity’s sake.

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Matteo Discardi has produced a nice little app to perform the “rebuild your database and speed up Mail.app”" trick.

It’s been a while since I rebuilt my own Envelope Index, so Matteo’s app shaved a handsome 1.2 MB off mine. Snappy. Snappy.

If you have somehow missed the way this trick puts a boost back into the performance of Mail, you can read about it in an older Hawk Wings post, which outlines how to do this via the Terminal.

It doesn’t offer the options to automate the clean out that you can find in VacuumMail, another app that does the same thing, but it is a nice, polished alternative. It’s polite too:

Matteo is offering it for free but is not refusing donations from satisfied users. You can get the latest version from his web site where he warns you that it is a beta. Back up your Envelope Index file first, unless you crave the excitement of living on the bleeding edge.

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Pierre Igot takes aim at the Apple technote about Missing Messages in a post on Betalogue.

This technote describes what to do when a particular error message—“Message has not been downloaded from the server, take this account online to view.”—appears on your screen due to corruption in Mail’s internal SQLite database.

It’s a shocker, Pierre argues:

I find this particular tech note to be particularly interesting, because there are many aspects of it that are very wrong and indicative of a rather user-hostile attitude at Apple these days. In this post I’d like to highlight some of what I think are the worst aspects of this tech note.

And he does. Have a read .

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I never go away from Betalogue without learning something.

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On MacWorld Joe Kissell provides a list of 34 software tweaks that will speed up your Mac.

Mail.app gets a speed bump from reducing the size of your mailboxes, spring-cleaning the Previous Recipients list, reducing the frequency of mail-checks and by adjusting your IMAP settings.

iCal gets faster if you weed out old appointments and events.

You might also want to try rebuilding Mail.app’s database, which worked a treat for me.

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MacGeekery has posted a piece on smart mailboxes.

It explains what smart mailboxes are, how they don’t really “contain” emails and how, in fact, they don’t even really exist.

It also shows you how to use them to search your email most efficiently and quickly by using information stored in Mail’s own database rather than relying on Spotlight.

After digesting that, you could move on to Joe Kissell’s MacWorld article on Smart Mailboxes for more tips and tricks.

[Via TUAW ]

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Envelope Index (see “What’s in your Mail folder?”) is an SQLite database that stores key information about your emails. Over time it can get terminally corrupted (see “The dreaded ‘your home directory is full’ message”).

It can also suffer a large number of smaller hiccups and corruptions which slow Mail down, although they don’t knock it out.

A poster on macOSXHints explains how his database stored phantom messages from an Exchange server he used over Summer.

Quitting Mail, dragging the Envelope Index to the Desktop, restarting Mail and allowing it to reindex his emails, cut its size from 200MB to 2MB. The speed increase was significant. Rob Griffiths reduced his from 25.9MB to 4.5MB.

My result was less dramatic (21.6MB -> 17.6MB) but Mail.app still feels a little more zippy.

Worth a shot for you too, perhaps? If so, first make sure you have a backup of your ~/Library/Mail folder in case something goes wrong. Dragging it out of Finder onto your Desktop will do the trick.

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