If you try to use a mail command and you get something like: inc: eof encountered in field "" or show: context is poorly formatted Don't worry! It just means that your "context" file, which keeps track of where you are, doesn't contain the information it should. However, this file can and will be recreated properly by any mail command you use, so if you type: delete ~/Mail/context inc from your athena% prompt, you should be able to access all of your mail, with none of it having been lost.