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Mail- Out tray - I want to delete a file

Melvin Furd

Melvin Furd

macrumors member
Original poster
I have accidently attached a large file in the Mail program. When I send it , it keeps on crashing. I realize the file is way to large to send. I would like to delete the mail file, is there a way of deleteing this file without opening the mail program to delete it. As it keeps on crashing when I open mail.
 
It actually crashes Mail? Eeep, how big is it? 😱

You might be able to get away with this: with mail closed, open up this directory:

~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Outbox.mbox (~ = your home dir)

And then rename all of the files in there (mbox and table_of_contents) to something like mbox.bak and so on. Then start Mail.

You should find that Mail recreated the original files (that there is a new mbox and a new table_of_contents in that directory). If so, delete the old ones. If you run into trouble, name them back to the original names.
 
The above method should work... An alternate method, if Mail remains open for 5 or 10 seconds before crashing (which it should, in my experience) you can quickly hit command-0 (zero) right after the Mail window appears, which opens the Activity Viewer, then click the little stop sign by the "sending mail" task... If you do it fast enough, it should stop the sending before it transmits much data, hopefully not crashing Mail. You can then go into your outbox and delete it.
 
paulwhannel said:
The above method should work... An alternate method, if Mail remains open for 5 or 10 seconds before crashing (which it should, in my experience) you can quickly hit command-0 (zero) right after the Mail window appears, which opens the Activity Viewer, then click the little stop sign by the "sending mail" task... If you do it fast enough, it should stop the sending before it transmits much data, hopefully not crashing Mail. You can then go into your outbox and delete it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if the crash is not instantaneous, but occurs when the actual send attempt happens, then I think Paul's suggestion is much better. 🙂
 
mail delete

The delete from the out box seem to work.

But it looks like from the draft version, it is trying to upload the same file
into the outbox to send.

Any way from stopping this from happening
 
Melvin Furd said:
The delete from the out box seem to work.

But it looks like from the draft version, it is trying to upload the same file
into the outbox to send.

Any way from stopping this from happening
Click to expand...

So you have another copy of the same message in the draft folder? Or you have a copy that is not supposed to have the attachment in the drafts folder, but it appears to add the attachment on anyway? I'd open the draft, copy the text into the clipboard, and delete it and start over (pasting the text into a new message).
 
It's the same message in the draft file. It looks like I deleted it,now it's indexing my in mail box. Not sure if it's working .
 
mail now working but now indexing problem

I was able to delete the file from the out box. Now it is continously indexing. Any way to fix this problem
 
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