Yep, I had a code RED situation on my hands. What to do? What to do? Panic? ummm… Sounds good but probably not the most constructive thing to do. OK, let’s take it slow and try to figure out where the @#$$@@&^* my email is and why I can’t get it working.

It would seem that the malfunction was in the Mail application itself. How did I know? I navigated to my mail folder in the Finder and everything seemed to be there – intact. The migration seemed not to affect any of those files. So what would cause a brand new installation to cause the app to freeze on launch, leaving no trace of my emails in the Inbox? This was a doozy of a problem. And what I headache it was starting to cause.

I switch over to my other Mac (yes, I’ve got two on my desk). Some Google research didn’t net me any solid information on what the issue was. So… I bit the bullet. I decided to re-import my email. ALL of them. One folder at a time. And I had several of them. Eeek! This is not what I really needed. I saw no other choice so went ahead in reimporting.

Well, that took what seemed like an eternity. All files were moved and my mail has returned. Yay! Next is to quit and relaunch. Turns out, my problems were just beginning. The app was locked up tight, yet AGAIN!

ARGGGHHHH!!!

Why should an update work right the first try? Of course not, Murphy has to always make an appearance – that’s the rule. OK, then, now that he appeared, what would I do about it? I went back to my trusty helper, Google. This time I narrowed down the results to some pertinent links. And then I found the ONE that held my answer. Apparently, what was happening was due to a Mail “Rule” going awry from the update. Solution? Kill the Rules files. Annoying but I thought, I can rebuild them pretty easy. So, that’s what I did. Lo and behold! Mail returned and didn’t freeze! Awesome!

And what a feeling it is when “order” is finally restored in the computer universe. Once it stared working, I got a chance to explore. Yeah, those new features like HTML stationery templates are really cool. Gotta try those out. Really nifty…

Thankfully, it was a quiet day regarding my regular workload. I didn’t have a major project getting delayed while I was troubleshooting. So that was nice. OK, what time is it? Oh gee… it’s 7pm!!!

D’oh!!!

See what happens? Yeah that was quite a day. But thankfully, it ended with full Leopard functionality and no major problems left to clean up. Time to relax and pack up for the commute home. Another tech crisis solved. Tomorrow would be a new day with hopefully a fresh, uneventful start…