Hello, again. After getting past the problem of "Pegasus dies after saying 'Preparing folder management layer'", by doing a Dropbox rewind of the entire Mail directory, I've done the necessary reconfigurations (don't know what the rewound system thought I was a new user) and am almost back up and running, sending and receiving, and my old data are all there. But there's one problem I haven't been able to solve: the proper handling of the received .CNM message files.

Currently they are landing in the same directory as the folder .PMI and .PMM files, and the STATE.PMJ, PMAIL.INI, and PND files, for example -- but they stay there and are not automatically deleted when the message is moved to the New mail folder or, by a filter rule, to some another folder. They just sit there and accumulate.

What's worse, if I delete a .CNM file, its message (now located in New mail, say) is no longer readable!

I've messed up something by making some change since all was working well, but can't figure out what. A little background: A few months ago, I used the proper Pegasus tool (I believe) to move my mail folder from what I'll call the OLD directory to a NEW directory within the Dropbox folder, so that it would be backed up by Dropbox. Everything worked. But later I discovered that the OLD directory (specifically its "craig" subfolder for user craig) was still in use as well -- for .CNM files. The PMAIL.INI was located there, too.

So the standard "move" procedure either didn't work right, or (more likely!) I messed it up somehow.

So now, in recovering from my crash by means of a restore, I thought I'd "fix" (dangerous thought!) this odd combination of OLD and NEW directories. (Maybe it's also significant that the old installation was multi-user and the restored one is declaring itself to be single-user -- which is fine now.) I ran pconfig32 to move both Home and New mail directories from OLD/~8 (i.e., OLD/craig) to NEW. Seemed to work OK, except for this problem of not deleting the .CNMs and not letting them be deleted safely.

So I'd like to better understand how the CNM files work, both intrinsically and with respect to the Home and New mail directories, so I can fix everything.

Sorry to be bothering you again, but I certainly do appreciate your help!

Thanks,
Craig

Each .CNM file is a new message. There will be one for each message in the New Mail folder. It is normal for the .CNM files to be in the same directory as PMAIL.INI, STATE.PMJ, and the .PMM and .PMI folder files. This "normal" is when the Home and the New Mailbox locations are in the same directory. Your previous installation had them in different directories. The new message files (.CNM) and PMAIL.INI would have been in the New mailbox directory while the remaining configuration files and the folder files would have been in the Home mailbox directory. This is the normal result of using the built-in tool that moves a mailbox. Its help file goes into detail about this.

FYI: If you go to the Help pull-down menu and select About Pegasus Mail and then click the Info button you will see entries for the paths to the Home and New mailbox locations.

You say that when you remove a .CNM file it become unreadable from the New mail folder. This makes sense only if you are removing it while Pegasus Mail is running. The New mail folder message list has not refreshed so you are clicking on a message whose file does not exist. If you shut down Pegasus Mail and then delete a .CNM file, its message will not be listed in the New mail folder when you next start Pegasus Mail.

Comment one, if you move a message from a folder to the New mail folder it will become a .CNM file.

Comment two, a move from the New mail folder to any other folder should remove its .CNM file. This is the only behavior described in your post that is not normal.

Do this test:

• Create a Pegasus Mail folder called "1_New Mail Hold" (the leading "1" is to sort it near the top of the folder list).
• Move all messages except the newest one out of the New mail folder and into the "1_New Mail Hold" folder. There should be one message in the New mail folder.
• Close Pegasus Mail and then check for .CNM files in the mailbox directory. There should be one. Sorting by date, newest on top, should make it easier to find. If there is more than one than something is very wrong.
• If there is only one, add the -O option to your shortcut command line to force Pegasus Mail to start offline.
• Open Pegasus Mail and move that message to the "1_New Mail Hold" folder.
• Close Peg and check for that .CNM file. It should be gone.

Once done with this test you can move all of the messages from the "1_New Mail Hold" folder back to the New mail folder, delete the "1_New Mail Hold" folder, and remove the -O option from the shortcut.

Thanks, Brian!

Somehow I had missed the point that the New Mail folder is just a view of the .CNM files, not a regular .PMM file. That was dumb of me. So of course everything is indeed now working as it should and makes perfect sense.

I don't understand why my reversion to the state of 6 January should have returned Pegasus to an unconfigured single user state, but no matter. (Undoubtedly related to reverting only the Home directory and not the New mail directory. But no need to track down the precise reason.) It's given me the occasion to go through all the configuration options again, which has been a useful reminder of all the flexibility that Pegasus provides.

So I'm back in business again, 100%, and again I thank you for all your help!!

Cheers,
Craig