Any way to prevent Mail from opening?

[sacear]

I am wondering if anyone knows how to prevent Mail in OS X from automatically launching. I have several user accounts on my Mac, yet I want Mail to open in only one user account and in none of the others. I want to have all my e-mail in one user account and not spread across several user accounts.

I removed the Mail icon from the dock in the appropriate accounts. However, earlier today while web browsing in one of my "non-Mail" user accounts, I clicked a link and it automatically launched Mail, which immediately started downloading all my e-mail. Yikes, not what I expected nor wanted. I had never launched Mail before in this account, how did it know my e-mail account information?

How can I prevent Mail from launching in specific OS X user accounts?

As a secondary question, when clicking a link that is an e-mail address on a webpage (not always obvious), is there any way to get a warning from Safari before launching Mail? Something like, "Do you really want to launch Mail?"

I appreciate any help, hints, or tips. Thanks.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I am wondering if anyone knows how to prevent Mail in OS X from automatically launching. I have several accounts on my Mac, yet I want Mail to open in only one account and in none of the others. I want to have all my e-mail in one account and not spread across several accounts.

I removed the Mail icon from the dock in the appropriate accounts. However, earlier today while web browsing in one of my "non-Mail" accounts, I clicked a link and it automatically launched Mail, which immediately started downloading all my e-mail. Yikes, not what I expected nor wanted. I had never launched Mail before in this account, how did it know my e-mail account information?

How can I prevent Mail from launching in specific OS X accounts?

As a secondary question, when clicking a link that is an e-mail address on a webpage (not always obvious), is there any way to get a warning from Safari before launching Mail? Something like, "Do you really want to launch Mail?"

I appreciate any help, hints, or tips. Thanks.

The only way I know of to do this is to block Mail completely by using the application launch restrictions in the Accounts pane of System Preferences. After you do this, any attempts to launch Mail in an account it's been blocked in will result in an access denied message.

 

[jsw]

One thing which I think might help you out is to open Mail, go into Preferences...->Accounts, and, for each account, go to the Advanced tab and at least deselect "Include when automatically checking for new mail", if not "Enable this account". Assuming the former option is unchecked, Mail won't fetch from that account when opened. If the latter is checked (the top one in the panel), then it shouldn't check it, ever, even when told to "Get Mail".

 

[wordmunger]

Try setting your default mailreading app to something other than Mail in your Mail preferences. It really could be any other program (though I tried setting it to "safari" and that didn't work. Preview works, though). You can also set you Mail prefs to check for mail manually in your other accounts. Then at least Mail won't automatically download your mail in those accounts.

 

[mkrishnan]

I had never launched Mail before in this account, how did it know my e-mail account information?

This part really surprises me.... So your other accounts, which had Mail.app, and had your accounts and passwords, but not your mail? The first part of that is disturbing...but given the first part, the second part of that is just strange....

I don't share my Mac, but if I did, I wouldn't like the idea that any file with my passwords was floating around the other accounts.

One more suggestion...it isn't perfect, but what if you set authentication on, for all the mail accounts, but left the passwords blank, so you'd be forced to enter them? This would prevent Mail from accomplishing anything without your intervention. That would be a jury-rig at best, though, if nothing else works.

 

[jsw]

I totally misread the original post - sorry.

If you truly don't want Mail to run in any other account, one fail-safe way to do so would be to go to Applications, select Mail, press ⌘-I to Get Info, go to Ownership & Permissions, set yourself as the Owner (you'll need to click the lock icon to unlock it, then supply your admin password to change the value), then set it so Group and Others can't do anything with it.

However, I'll see if I can figure out what happened with the account info.

 

[sacear]

Thanks for your help.

Thank you all very much for your suggestions.

I am very surprised that Mail knew my email account information, as I have never established that info in System Prefs or Mail Prefs. I had never even opened Mail in this user account before. In fact, the only email account information I have on this computer is a completely different email account on a different OS X user account.

The only way I can think of that this happened is that I have logged-on to my .Mac account through the web using Safari. That should not establish my email account information in Mail, yet maybe it did somehow. I have also synced this account to my iDisk using iSync. Yet iSync has nothing to do with Mail. So I am confused.

In all 182 email messages were downloaded, all in a matter of seconds, yet they also remained on my .Mac webmail account, so I just opened Prefs in Mail and deleted the account entirely. So now I know there is no email account information at all in Mail right now. So if that happens again I will know it is getting that information from .Mac, iDisk, or iSync somehow.

 

[absolut_mac]

So if that happens again I will know it is getting that information from .Mac, iDisk, or iSync somehow.

From the info that I've seen on this forum alone, .mac and iDisk still seem to be works largely in progress i.e. they should still be beta products because most of the bugs don't seem to be worked out yet - and to make matters worse, Apple is very unresponsive to emails from unhappy .mac customers who rightfully want to know what's going on.

I mean come on now, it's not like a free Yahoo or Gmail account so you don't mind putting up with a few bugs because you're not paying for it.

Let us know if you find out more info, but it does seem to me that .mac is the culprit.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Thank you all very much for your suggestions.

I am very surprised that Mail knew my email account information, as I have never established that info in System Prefs or Mail Prefs. I had never even opened Mail in this user account before. In fact, the only email account information I have on this computer is a completely different email account on a different OS X user account.

The only way I can think of that this happened is that I have logged-on to my .Mac account through the web using Safari. That should not establish my email account information in Mail, yet maybe it did somehow. I have also synced this account to my iDisk using iSync. Yet iSync has nothing to do with Mail. So I am confused.

In all 182 email messages were downloaded, all in a matter of seconds, yet they also remained on my .Mac webmail account, so I just opened Prefs in Mail and deleted the account entirely. So now I know there is no email account information at all in Mail right now. So if that happens again I will know it is getting that information from .Mac, iDisk, or iSync somehow.

That's what did it. When you set up .Mac sync via iSync, you also established your .Mac account information (indirectly) in System Preferences. Mail looks for this information, and if it's there, automatically sets up your .Mac email account if it isn't already set up.

 

[sacear]

That's what did it. When you set up .Mac sync via iSync, you also established your .Mac account information (indirectly) in System Preferences. Mail looks for this information, and if it's there, automatically sets up your .Mac email account if it isn't already set up.

Thank you for confirming that. So now, how I can I prevent that from happening again?

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Thank you for confirming that. So now, how I can I prevent that from happening again?

If you use .Mac with that account, I don't think you can - nor do I see why you would want to do that, since Apple included it as a convenience to .Mac subscribers.

 

[sacear]

If you use .Mac with that account, I don't think you can - nor do I see why you would want to do that, since Apple included it as a convenience to .Mac subscribers.

I can understand that in some cases, however in my case that is an inconvenience, because I have my .Mac email account on a different Mac computer and don't want email messages spread across multiple computers or even multiple accounts. I'll keep researching and try to figure something out.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

How can I prevent Mail from launching in specific OS X user accounts?

If the other accounts aren't Admins you can check out System Preferences -> Accounts -> <the non-Admin account> -> Limitations. There is a possibility to choose which applications the user are allowed to launch, or not. Don't see Mail on the list, but there is an option to add applications to the list. Haven't tried to see if Mail can be added and then unchecked...