Mail Error -- "Some actions taken while the account was offline could not be completed"

Some users, since installing Leopard, find that of Apple's Mail.app exhibits an issue in which sent messages keep appearing in the "Sent Mail" folder every few seconds and errors that claim offline actions could not be completed appear.

Per Apple Discussions poster snowmaninthesun:

"I sent a message in Apple Mail and a new copy of it keeps poping up in my 'On My Mac' folder under my sent mail folders every 10-15 seconds. I also get an error message that says : 'Mail has undone actions on some messages so that you can redo the actions while online. Mail has saved other messages in mailbox 'On My Mac' so that you can complete the actions while online."

This problem has persisted through the Leopard system updates and seems to happen randomly with no apparent cause. When it does, users have found that it is nearly impossible to use Mail, or even edit Mail's preferences with this error appearing persistently

In addition, some users have experienced other IMAP-related errors.

Fixes

Remove offline cache files Users have had success in removing the offline cache files that Mail stores when users compose mail in "offline" mode. To do this, run the following command in the Terminal.

• rm ~/Library/Mail/*/.OfflineCache/*

NOTE: If users get an "access denied" error, then they should run the command with "sudo" in front of it as such, and enter their admin password when prompted:

• sudo rm ~/Library/Mail/*/.OfflineCache/*

Remove and re-add accounts If users can get to the Mail application preferences, they can try removing their accounts and then re-adding them. If this does not help, or cannot be done because of the error message persisting, then the following fix may help.

Remove preferences files Quit Mail and go to the user's preferences folder /username/Library/Preferences/ and remove the Mail application preferences file, which is named com.apple.Mail.plist. This will reset user account information, but will not remove downloaded messages or mailbox folder structures, so when users relaunch Mail they should be able to get their accounts back up and running by only entering account information.

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