Many thanks -- I've finally got the Tab working properly again. In the end, I followed your suggestion and deleted the mail preferences (library/preferences/com.apple.mail.plist), then reopened Mail. It was of course back in the default layout, but it was easy enough to restore my settings and Tab is once again working as it should: taking me between the mailboxes and the messages list.
Thanks again. Fred On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 4:01 AM, Esther <mori...@mac-access.net> wrote: > Hi Fred, > > Is your mail toolbar showing or hidden? One thing you can try if your > mail toolbar is showing is to go to the "View" menu of the Mail menu bar > and hide it. Then try tabbing. In an earlier post I wrote an explanation > about how the exact tab focus behavior (using tab to move focus between all > elements or just lists and text boxes) can get changed depending on where > your focus is when you press Control-F7 to change this action. For > example, in Mail on one system I found that I could break the ability to > tab just between mailbox and message in the Message Viewer window by moving > my focus to the search box (Command-Option-F), and then toggling the > Control-F7 to change the focus action of the tab key from that location. > Tabbing worked as expected in all other apps. > > Failing that, you can try to quit Mail and delete some mail preference > files, or moving them to the Desktop. Perhaps one of these got corrupted. > If you have a Time Machine backup of when things were working, try just > copying over the plist files associated with mail. I don't remember all of > these, but the main one would be "com.apple.mail.plist". You can find it > in Finder by first going to your user account with Command-Shift-H. Then > use the Command-Shift-G "go to folder" shortcut, and type or paste into the > text box of the dialog window: > Library/Preferences > and press return. There should be a com.apple.mail.plist file that you > can copy or move to your Desktop. If this preference file is deleted from > your Library/Preferences folder, then the next time you open your mail > application, it will be as though you were using mail with the system > defaults. You do have to configure your mail the way you want again from > scratch, which is why it is better to use an old copy from when things were > working the way you want. If you have an older cloned backup, you can copy > the mail plist file from that disk into your account's current > Library/Preferences folder. If, after you reconfigure your mail > preferences, tabbing still doesn't work correctly, you can move back the > version that you copied to your Desktop. Just remember to quit Mail first > before you move the plist file over. Preference files get updated every > time you exit an application, so if you copy an old file to your > Library/Preferences folder while an application is open, it wi > ll just get overwritten by your current settings when you close the > application. This is also why plist files are the most likely thing to > examine when troubleshooting, after trying things like a permissions repair > under Disk Utility. Even though the incidence of problems is not high, > these files get open an re-written every time you use an application, so > over time, it's possible that one of the values gets set wrong. > > HTH. Cheers, > > Esther > > > On 29 Mar 2013, at 04:09, Josh Gregory wrote: > > > Very strange, the only other thing I can think of is if you might have a > time machine backup of When it did work. > > > > Sent from my iPhone > > > > On Mar 29, 2013, at 5:15 AM, fred smith <snuc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > >> No luck -- I rebuilt the mailboxes but tab still does nothing. Tab still > >> works as usual in other applications, so the problem appears to be > confined > >> to mail. > >> > >> > > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> > > To reply to this post, please address your message to > mac-access@mac-access.net > > You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum > at either the list's own dedicated web archive: > <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> > or at the public Mail Archive: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. > Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: > <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> > > As the Mac Access Dot Net administrators, we do our very best to ensure > that the Mac-Access E-Mal list remains malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and > worm-free. However, this should in no way replace your own security > strategy. 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