Mail.app crashes on launch consistently

Funny how Apple deleted my posts when i called it a bug. Everyone I know is having problems with mail! I even posted crash log. MAIL DOES NOT WORK ON Mountain Lion for most users.

I tried fix abaove still crash.

I have a Simple fix. Don't Use Apple Mail!!! Use MS Outlook works like a charm!!

Called Apple Tech support. They had me reinstall everything. Sorta like going to get your flat tire repaird and tey say just buy a new car that will fix it. Worthless call don't bother.

Went to local Apple store they were awsome but could not fix it.

So it is up to the users here to come up with the fix. When Steve Jobs was around he would never release a rev without mail working.. Wow do I miss him!! he really used this stuff.

Please post any fixes you find thanks for all the USERS support. Seem to be more knowledgable then
Apple,

David's advice worked like a charm for me. I just got back from a 10 day vacation -- I was hoping Apple would've released an update or fix for this while I was gone, but David solved my problem. Thanks.

David Mccollum1 wrote:

I fixed it! I went to ~/Library/Containers. There I removed the entire com.apple.mail folder to the trash, emptied the trash and rebooted. Mail opened just fine and started populating with all my email. So, I'm back in business. I did make a copy of the file on an external USB thumb drive just in case, but it looks like I won't need that.

Good luck.

Did not work for me, and as far as this being caused by a "funky" message, Thunderbird is having no problem with the same messages.

Obviously some combination of events seems to be triggering this, Hopefully all the crash reports that get sent to Apple will give them a clue how to fix it.

I get odd behavior in some other programs, too, but nothing that really interferes with my work. I guess like all the other major updates version X.0 needs some work. Since everyone was saying that ML is a much more stable OS than Lion was, I was hoping not to have to deal with early adopter woes.

>You guys need to delete the folowing files from the Library folder

>- com.apple.AddressBook

>- AddressBook-v22.abcddb

>- com.apple.preferencepanes.cache

I don't even have these two files on my system:

AddressBook-v22.abcddb

com.apple.preferencepanes.cache

It's crazy that a Mail.app issue can lock up the whole computer.

Funkey Monkey wrote:

David's advice worked like a charm for me. I just got back from a 10 day vacation -- I was hoping Apple would've released an update or fix for this while I was gone, but David solved my problem. Thanks.

Well -- correction. It worked for me for a few hours. Mail downloaded all my messages from both my IMAP accounts and I didn't have to reset any of my settings except for default signature, for some reason.

BUT -- I logged out and logged back in, and we're right back to where we started -- CRASHageddon.

I run Thunderbird on my Windows machine at work. I guess I'll be a Thunderbird guy at home on my Mac, too.

I have the same issue. Started out with mail not auto completing addresses and morphed into freezing and then finally crash on startup of app. I have been on the phone with Apple support for a total of about 6 hours with 3 different people. All fixes are temporary and mail crashes again after a few days or even hours. The "genius" solution was for me to do an erase and install and a manual migration of all my data (12 Tb) without the help of migration assistant. Basically the worst case scenario in terms of a fix, but it would have been worth it if it indeed worked. It did nothing to solve the problem permanently. If you have an important email you need to send trashing the com.apple.mail folder in the containers folder in the user library solves the problem temporarilly for me, but only for a short time. There is obviously a bug that needs to be addressed here. Come on apple, I know you have your hands full with the Maps screw up, but mail working is about as important as it gets!

This worked for me too.

Great David,

that solved this problem !

I was getting nuts with that. The fan was on all the time. I was trying to minimise the number of mail through gmail or other accounts.

The MBA is working well now.

I do wonder what is the use of ~/Library/Containers that had been rebuilt well.

Best

A. St-Georges

Thank you Cozar! I had the same problem. In my case it seems to have been a rotten message, apparently corrupted during the download process on that specific Mac. It did not cause a problem on my other Macs or iOS devices. After clicking on that message the spinning beach ball started to appear and Mail crashed. I forwarded the message from my iPad and deleted the original message, checked on one of my other Macs and made sure the message had been deleted. The forwarded message loaded fine, and on the affected iMac the Mail issue was resolved. It works fine now. I hope it stays that way. :) Great advice! Thank you!

David Mccollum1 you are THE MAN. After a clean install of ML and complete reinstallation of my old hard drive apps and data, mail was working perfectly for 3 days. then, kaput. ???? Your solution fixed it. I have no idea what the problem was, but it worked. thank you so much.

Hello,

I got this problem too on a two week old MacBookPro. None of the suggestions on this post helped me, and at the Apple Store the Genius told me to completely reinstall the system. I decided to install Thunderbird instead, but before even starting using it, in a couple of days Mail went misteriously back to normal behavior.

In my case, I noticed that it crashes everytime it tries to retrieve some new mail; if put offline, it opens without crashing. So I thought it was a problem triggered by a rotten message and I deleted all the unretrieved mail from iCloud through Safari. However it didn't help and the app kept crashing for a couple of days.

When it finally started working again, I noticed that when I try to open a Smart Folder (the Unread folder or the VIP folder, which I imagine to be some structured like a Smart Folder) it crashes. If I don't open any Smart Folder, or the VIP folder, everything works perfectly. So, could it be an issue related to Smart Folders?

BTW, on a MacBookAir and a MacPro with the same system (10.8.2) I never had this issue; it's only on my MacBookPro.

Mail.app just started crashing recently. If I take the email account offline real fast it stays up and I can send mail no problem. As soon as I take it online it crashes again.

I tried all the fixes listed in this thread and nothing solved my problem. Finally downloaded the pop3 mail off my server with thunderbird. Once the server was empty Mail then started working properly.

I have looked at the 50 emails to figure out which one could be the culprit but nothing stands out.

Hope my experience helps someone else experiencing this frustrating problem.

Wow, Maxwho!

I just deleted all the mail in the server and Mail started working properly! You made my day!

I only tried that for five minutes or so, but at the moment everything seems to work smoothly. At the moment, yours appears to be the only working solution.

Bravo!

I'm glad it worked for you.

cheers