A while back I installed a pretty neat Mail extension called MailTags, which was used to tag mail messages with additional information. Cool concept.
However, at the time the usage I was personally getting out of it didn’t warrant the price for the app, and I uninstalled the application after the trial period was over.
Unfortunately, things didn’t end there, because I kept getting repeated log messages like this when I looked at the console:
1/1/09 2:52:05 PM Mail[362] Cannot restore width of table column with identifier 24
It was really obvious (and annoying), as I use GeekTools to monitor my console on my desktop in order to keep a bird’s eye view on what’s happening in the background.
I found out that I was not the only other user having this problem, and the MailTags site had a solution invoked from the Terminal:
$ defaults delete com.apple.mail TableColumns
I’d done this before, but the problem resurfaced. Not sure why. And, doing it again seems to have fixed the problem, again. My log is back to normal.
Meanwhile, I discovered that that MailTags has a new version out, and perhaps I’ll give them a second chance.
I just tend to get worried when an extension appears to go deep, especially when we know Apple is about to revamp things with the next release of the OS, and cruft somehow got left behind before.
Make sure Mail is not running when you change your preferences (defaults), otherwise the old settings might be re-enabled by the running application.
If you want to remove just this column and not remove all column settings, you can also edit the file with the Property List Editor (installed with the Developer Tools). Then you just remove the columns with identifier 24, and leave the rest untouched.