Mr Sunshine

Q: mail crashes repeatedly in mavericks on 2013 mba

I just installed Mavericks on a 2103 MBA. All went smoothly except for Mail. Mail crashes repeatedly on opening. Any one else having the same issue?

MacBook Air, OS X Mavericks (10.9), 2013 model

Posted on Oct 22, 2013 2:09 PM

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Q: mail crashes repeatedly in mavericks on 2013 mba

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  • by Marianco1,

    Marianco1 Marianco1 Nov 3, 2013 7:57 PM in response to Mr Sunshine
    Level 2 (229 points)
    Nov 3, 2013 7:57 PM in response to Mr Sunshine

    Mail started repeatedly crashing immediately on my Mac starting it today - about a week after installing OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

     

    Typing in Terminal "defaults delete com.apple.mail ColorQuoterColorList" did not work.

     

    I figured out how to get mail running again with the following:

     

    I think there are several issues that conspired to cause the crashes:

     

    1. Mail changed how it handles GMail accounts causing all of the mail from GMail to be downloaded and duplicated into separate folders depending on the label assigned to the email.  In GMail, each email can have several labels.  But in Mail, these labels are NOW treated as separate folders - which is how traditional email programs handle this problem.  Thus Mail places a duplicate of each email into a folder corresponding to each label. 

     

    -> This change forces Mail to repeatedly and heavily re-index the email.

     

    2. Mail has to re-index the thousands of emails in some user's Macs.  On my computer, I did not realize that I had over 140,000 pieces of email I had saved through the years.  Many people have more.  This is over 25% of all the files in the Mac!

     

    -> Unfortunately, doing this re-indexing on the fly while people are reorganizing and manipulating their email can lead to corruption of the contents of the MacintoshHD:Users:YourName:Library:Mail:V2 folder where each email account's data is stored.

     

    -> Interestingly, Mail has to do a lot of the Operating System's work - indexing, reorganizing, labeling files, etc.  With some people having over 400,000 emails, this is a lot of work.  And it is prone to failure since the Mac OS uses the HFS+ file system which isn't the most robust file system.

     

    3. While Mail is re-indexing and re-organizing the email, OS X 10.9 is also updating the Spotlight index on the fly.

     

    -> These competing file requests can cause the file system to be overloaded, possibly leading to Mail crashing.

     

    The steps to get mail running again are the following:

     

    0. Make a backup of your Mail folder: MacintoshHD:Users:YourName:Library:Mail

     

    1. Open the System Preferences > Internet Accounts Preference Panel. And INACTIVATE every email account by un-checking "Mail" or "Enable This Account" for each email account.

     

    -> This stops the heavy and repeated re-indexing of email.  This allows Mail to restart without crashing.

     

    2. Go to each GMail Account you have.  Go to Settings > Labels and set "All Mail" to "show".

     

    -> This stops the duplication of emails by Mail. This reduces Mail's re-indexing and reorganization work.

     

    3. If you do not need the emails stored in GMail, erase all of them in Gmail. Go to each of your online email accounts and erase what you don't need.

     

    -> This reduces the indexing that Mail has to do with GMail and other EMail accounts.

     

    4. Go to MacintoshHD:Users:YourName:Library:Mail:V2 and erase the contents of each GMail account's folder and any other account's folder you want to start fresh.

     

    6. Open the System Preferences > Internet Accounts Preference Panel. Then ONE-BY-ONE Activate each email account.  Check that Mail can start and remain stable after activating each account.

     

    7. If any account causes Mail to crash, inactivate it.  Erase its MacintoshHD:Users:YourName:Library:Mail:V2 account folder countent.  Then try to reactivate it.

     

    -> AVOID moving or deleting large numbers of emails during this process.  Mail is indexing and organizing the emails so you don't want it to make and error which leads to a crash.

     

    -> You can tell Mail or the File System is working heavily to index the email by using a utility such as iStat Menus which can monitor the CPU usage.  Of course, the fan spinning loudly is a clue.

     

    8. Once the indexing is complete, Mail is once again stable.

     

    In the near future, I want to reduce the workload of Mail by archiving the email into DEVONThink Pro Office or Email Archiver or similar program.  There, the email can still be organized, searched for, etc.  But it will no longer be a burden on Mail to organize.  Any email to archive will simply be transferred.

     

    Another lesson learned is that I wouldn't want 300,000+ emails stored in Gmail like some people.  Mail will download all of these, taking up a lot of disk space and work to index and organize.  Since privacy is a problem with Google, it makes far more sense to offload the email into your Mac, where it can be kept private, and easily searched offline.

  • by EsuOsmis,

    EsuOsmis EsuOsmis Nov 4, 2013 8:20 PM in response to Mr Sunshine
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 4, 2013 8:20 PM in response to Mr Sunshine

    Here is my problem, any help appreciated, I have tried most of the solutions in this thread without success:

     

    Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

     

    Exception Type:  EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)

    Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

     

    Application Specific Information:

    *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '*** setObjectForKey: key cannot be nil' abort() called terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

  • by Marianco1,

    Marianco1 Marianco1 Nov 4, 2013 8:43 PM in response to EsuOsmis
    Level 2 (229 points)
    Nov 4, 2013 8:43 PM in response to EsuOsmis

    I repeatedly got this error message (Exception Type:  EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)).

     

    Try the solution in my post above.  It worked for me.


  • by JohnMM,

    JohnMM JohnMM Nov 4, 2013 10:19 PM in response to Maarten220
    Level 1 (48 points)
    Mac OS X
    Nov 4, 2013 10:19 PM in response to Maarten220

    Look in your Dock. You might find two or more Mail icons. Click on each and quit. It may not be necessary to reboot, but there may be other processes duplicated, so it wouldn't hurt.

  • by Jimyyz,

    Jimyyz Jimyyz Nov 5, 2013 12:26 PM in response to barthrh.1
    Level 1 (101 points)
    Nov 5, 2013 12:26 PM in response to barthrh.1

    Thanks barthrh.1 This did work for me. (I'm not using iCloud for email.)

    I removed the ~/Library/Mail (keeping them just in case), however, I deleted 2 subfolders within the Container folder: com.apple.mail AND com.apple.MailServiceAgent. I then deleted the Internet Accounts in system prefs. Then I set-up my 3 email accounts one by one, checking each as I went along. Finally I imported my old email. Everything seems to be working fine now.

     

    For the record, defaults delete com.apple.mail ColorQuoterColorList did NOT work for me.

  • by filmfp,

    filmfp filmfp Nov 6, 2013 3:41 AM in response to Mr Sunshine
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 6, 2013 3:41 AM in response to Mr Sunshine

    We have had the same error .. one workaround so far which has worked is:  create a new user on the same machine and move all data over there. my mail program works fine now. I will update if I find a better solution.

    In case anyone else comes up with something I would be grateful for tips!

  • by barbara93,

    barbara93 barbara93 Nov 6, 2013 6:18 PM in response to simlid
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 6, 2013 6:18 PM in response to simlid

    Simlid, My mail program was progressively eating up all available application memory and then pausing all the apps. If it started up at all, it took about  20 minutes.  I just followed your steps and now it's back starting up immediately, using very little memory, and running quickly.   I can't thank you enough. 

  • by simlid,

    simlid simlid Nov 6, 2013 8:37 PM in response to barbara93
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Desktops
    Nov 6, 2013 8:37 PM in response to barbara93

    Barbara

    Glad this worked, hope others find the steps I listed useful as well. My mail has been stable ever since.

  • by Chale Boy,

    Chale Boy Chale Boy Nov 10, 2013 6:16 PM in response to Marianco1
    Level 1 (40 points)
    Nov 10, 2013 6:16 PM in response to Marianco1

    My problem is I go to system preference and that becomes unresponsive.  I unenabled 4 of 6 of my email accounts but the last two I cant uncheck because the system preferences becomes unresponsive to the point that i must force quit it.  Not quite sure how to get to the next step.  I did try to run the Mavericks Mail update patch that apple released for gmail. but it didn't take care of the problem

  • by Lipsey33,

    Lipsey33 Lipsey33 Nov 13, 2013 3:13 AM in response to Craig Hermanson
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 13, 2013 3:13 AM in response to Craig Hermanson

    Thanks! This solved my problem as well...Thousands of Hotmail entries in the .plist file. Mail didn't even open before I did this...only thing that worked for me.

  • by rem179,

    rem179 rem179 Nov 15, 2013 11:53 AM in response to Mr Sunshine
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 15, 2013 11:53 AM in response to Mr Sunshine

    And what if Terminal (as well as Maps, Contacts, Preview, App Store and who knows what else) won't launch?

  • by taintworkin,

    taintworkin taintworkin Nov 15, 2013 12:01 PM in response to rem179
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 15, 2013 12:01 PM in response to rem179

    Try checking permissions on the account home folder (Finder window /Users/user and do a CMD-I on the folder.

    If the owner is read only, as it was for me, then change it to Read and Write and copy permissions down.

     

    If thats not it, then I have no further idea's for you.

  • by First_step,

    First_step First_step Nov 24, 2013 5:24 AM in response to ULaLaU
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 24, 2013 5:24 AM in response to ULaLaU

    This is just a general comment re Mavericks.  I have read countless shares on this upgrade for WEEEKS and the problems with the upgrade, and have decided that when I am given the option of upgrading to Mavericks that I will refuse the upgrade.

     

    I have told varioius potential customers of Apple to avoid any of their new products such as the MacAir and the MacPro... with Mavericks installed. I have quite a network of friends who are thinking of buying a MacAir or a MacPro.  Moreover, I have a family member who has used Apple products for years and works with many people world wide..they are all having problems with with Mavericks.  He has uninstalled  Mavericks (with some difficulty) on his MacPro and will not upgade his MacPro and other Mac products he has until Apple gets it right.  If my MacAir were to crash, he would have to be the one who helps me via phone and email...and he simply doesn't want the hassle of having to do that.

     

    I am sad for Apple, as the company appeasrs to be having a lot of problems with this upgrade. I do not have the proficiency with my MacAir to fix such problems shoujld they occur.  Please, Apple, fix this problem.  Then I will be able to recommend Apple products such as MacAir and MacPro safely. Note that several of my friends are now considering switching to a Microsoft tablet or laptop, as they have seen countless information on google relating to these problems...big loss for Apple.

  • by SammyFro,

    SammyFro SammyFro Nov 26, 2013 7:04 AM in response to First_step
    Level 1 (30 points)
    Nov 26, 2013 7:04 AM in response to First_step

    I agree with that assessment. I upgraded to Mavericks, and sad that I did. I tried numerous fixes to mail--many suggested here--and nothing works well. I visited the genious bar. They looked at my iMac. But I still get freezes on Safari and Mail, but interestingly third party apps like Google Chrome work fine.

     

    I usually wait until after the first upgrade to install a new OS. Wished I had done that in this case....

  • by macdangerousMD,

    macdangerousMD macdangerousMD Nov 29, 2013 6:38 PM in response to simlid
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Nov 29, 2013 6:38 PM in response to simlid

    simlid

     

    tried your method and seems to work, I'm now in the process of rebuilding my mail boxes, but, as my old boss used to say, sometimes the longest way round is the shortest way there.  Thanks

     

    Pass on the word

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