Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

georgeangelos

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 9, 2009
3
0
Mail started quitting a few days ago, just after it starts. I tried everything that has been suggested for these cases: removed beta version of Safari, remove Growl and any other third parties, remove the preferences file (.plist) and the user/Library/Mail folder. Nothing works! I set up another account on my Mac and Mail works there! I tried to use the new files that Mail generated for this new account for the old account but I couldn't make Mail to run. Any help is appreciated.
 
you may have received an email that has some funky html in it or something. this method has worked for me and some others, but it's really kind of a shot in the dark. it's really only useful if you are able to go through and delete some message one at a time. quit mail and reopen while holding the shift button. this will open mail without automatically loading a mailbox by default. then click on an email - if it crashes mail then that is most likely the bad message. if it doesnt then that message probably isn't crashing mail. re-open again holding down shift and delete the message that is causing mail to crash.

this probably isn't explained very well, but i don't know how else to.
 
I don't think this is the problem, as I have an IMAP account, meaning that I can access the same mailbox from other clients and modify its contents. So, over the last few days such an email, even if it did exist, has been deleted.

you may have received an email that has some funky html in it or something. this method has worked for me and some others, but it's really kind of a shot in the dark. it's really only useful if you are able to go through and delete some message one at a time. quit mail and reopen while holding the shift button. this will open mail without automatically loading a mailbox by default. then click on an email - if it crashes mail then that is most likely the bad message. if it doesnt then that message probably isn't crashing mail. re-open again holding down shift and delete the message that is causing mail to crash.

this probably isn't explained very well, but i don't know how else to.
 
I don't think this is the problem, as I have an IMAP account, meaning that I can access the same mailbox from other clients and modify its contents. So, over the last few days such an email, even if it did exist, has been deleted.
Actually, the problem glasserp describes CAN still happen even on IMAP. In the event that that fails (holding Shift while launching Mail doesn't cure the insta-crash) then I suggest that one of Mail's OTHER support files you haven't looked at yet is the cause. For instance, sometimes, for various reasons, Mail's SQLite-based database can become corrupted. Vacuuming it is a good fix.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.