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# Reprocess existing e-mail
- URL: https://kudithipudi.org/reprocess-existing-e-mail/
- Published: 2006-06-15T04:58:02.000Z
- Updated: 2006-06-15T04:58:02.000Z
- Description: Ran into an issue at work, where we had to reprocess all e-mails for a particular user on a Linux server. The email was stored in...
- Author: admin
- Tags: Linux, Networking, Technology, Uncategorized, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-08-23 02:32

Ran into an issue at work, where we had to reprocess all e-mails for a particular user on a Linux server. The email was stored in the standard mailbox format in /var/mail and all the e-mail was supposed to be sent to a different e-mail address. Here’s how we solved the issue

1) Use formail to split the mailbox into seperate messages and pipe it to sendmail. Command used was

**formail -Y -n -s� sendmail -odq NAME\_OF\_USER < /var/mail/NAME\_OF\_USER**

2) Force sendmail to process the queue and send the e-mail to the new address. Command used was

**sendmail -v -qRNEW\_EMAIL\_ADDRESS**

You can also edit the .forward file in the users home directory to forward e-mail to the new address and then you don’t have to specify the new e-mail address in the second command.