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