Error stating that I'm running an older version of Mail with a newer version of Mac OS X

Solution 1:

You can go to Apples web site and download the updates manually. The downloads site is:

http://support.apple.com/downloads/

Once there, go to the "Search Downloads" "10.6.8" update. You can download either the combo (for people who haven't updated much) or the last, which was just for the 10.6.7 to 10.6.8. You might want to find specifically which update made the changes.

What I would try is the following:

1. Move Mail.app back to /Applications
2. Perform the manual update(s) from the downloaded update

IF the download allows you to go through the packages and you can find out which package mail is in (the names aren't always straight forward) you could probably do a manual update using only that package.

This might be risky, but you could try actually doing the full update on the system. In the PAST, you could do that and it would ignore any updates that superseded what's in the package or already installed and only install those components needing update. I don't write Apple's update software so that might be risky.

Hope this helps.

Solution 2:

Solved it. Here's what I had to do:

1. Delete Mail.app from the directory where I had put it
2. Re-install Mail.app 4.2 from Snow Leopard's installation discs
3. Install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1 for upgrading Mail.app to version 4.5
4. Re-install Security Update 2012-004 (Snow Leopard). Now Mail.app is up to version 4.6

My problem was caused because Security Update 2012-004 didn't find Mail.app in the directory where it expected it, and anyway my Mail.app was out of date. Bottom line: it's a bad idea to move Mac OS X's default applications to non-standard directories.

Solution 3:

I was curious to see what would happen if I tried to update my own system, and also to see if the way they distribute the packages has changed. Here's what I found:

1. I did a 10.6.8 update on a 10.6.8 system. I could not get individual packages out, it was just one package

2. The install essentially raced through, but took some time registering the components.

3. After the install finished, I checked the /var/log/install.log file and it's filled with comments like this sample shows:

Skipping component "com.apple.PackageKit" (1.1.3-92.0.0-920000-*) because the version 1.1.4-93.0.0-930000-1 is already installed.

Skipping component "com.apple.QuickTimeImporters.component" (7.6.6-1783.0.0-17830000-*) because the version 7.6.6-1790.0.0-17900000-1 is already installed.

Skipping component "com.apple.MDImporter.CoreMedia" (0.484.52-484.52.0-4845200-*) because the version 0.484.60-484.60.0-4846000-1 is already installed.

Skipping component "com.apple.opengl" (1.6.13-1.6.13-61315-*) because the version 1.6.14-1.6.14-61400-1 is already installed.

It did this for every package - in other words, it didn't install anything or overwrite anything.

When the system rebooted, it was fine - no apparent change in anything.

I think this might be a way for you to get your mail working. When it's done, check the install log, and see if it actually updated Mail.

Hope this helps.