Resetting Mail.app layout

I may be seen as a Masochist but I use Apple’s Mail client for my email. It works more often than not and I have been rather happy with it.

Recently I noticed there was something amiss with the layout. A few nuances where windows had disappeared entirely and I could not activate them by the menu.

The fix

To reset the Mail.app layout you can do the following:

killall Mail &> /dev/null; mv ~/Library/Containers/
com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/
com.apple.mail.plist ~/Desktop && open -a Mail

What the command above does is the following

• Kills the Mail.App or skips if closed
• Locates the *apple.mail.plist* and moves it to the Desktop
• Reopens Mail.App.

If you need to restore what you did – the backup which resides on the desktop can be placed back to this directory

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/

UI returned – inner calm achieved

This fixed my layout issue and I am back to normal. This did not break or damage my Exchange account or my mailbox of emails.

I hope this helps