Spining wheels going no where

What type of mail accounts are these (POP, IMAP, .Mac)?

Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Network, choose Network Port Configurations from the Show popup menu, and make sure that the configuration used to connect to Internet appears at the top of the list. Leave checked (enabled) only the port configuration needed to connect to Internet and Built-in Ethernet (in that order if not the same), uncheck (disable) the rest of network port configurations, and see whether that helps — if it doesn’t, turn ON again the ones you want enabled.

Try launching Mail with no Internet connection, then taking Mail back online and see whether that makes a difference.

In Mail, open Window > Activity Viewer. What do you see Mail doing there?

You’re welcome 🙂

There are several things that could have a bearing on this. Since I don’t know for sure what it is, let’s try re-creating the preferences file first.

1. Quit Mail if it’s running.

2. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something goes wrong while trying to solve the problem. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the Mail folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is locally stored.

3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate com.apple.mail.plist and move it to the Desktop (to be deleted if this solves the problem).

4. Open Mail. You’ll have to set up your accounts from scratch all over again. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don’t. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in ~/Library/Mail/ when done.

Note: If you start experiencing the same problem again as soon as you set up one of the accounts, that means there is nothing wrong with com.apple.mail.plist itself and there is no need to continue. In that case, you can just quit Mail and move the original com.apple.mail.plist now on the Desktop back to ~/Library/Preferences/, replacing the new file that has been created there.

5. You’ll have to re-configure most of your settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it’s enabled.

6. You may also need to re-install or re-enable any Mail plug-ins you have installed for Mail to recognize them.

7. As a side effect of re-creating com.apple.mail.plist, Mail might rename Outbox (which is where messages waiting to be sent are stored) to Delivered. The name of that mailbox is actually a misnomer, as it would contain messages (if any) that couldn’t be delivered for some reason. You can delete that mailbox if you wish.

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Actually, I forgot to ask whether you have any Mail plug-ins or system utilities that could interfere with Mail. In the Finder, go to each of the following folders (if they exist). What do you see there?

/Library/InputManagers/
/Library/Mail/Bundles/
~/Library/InputManagers/
~/Library/Mail/Bundles/

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Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the folder path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the folder path there.

OK. Let’s try re-creating the index now:

1. Quit Mail if it’s running.

2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/. Make a backup copy of this folder, just in case something goes wrong, e.g. by dragging it to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down. This is where all your mail is locally stored.

3. Locate Envelope Index and move it to the Trash. If you see any other “Envelope Index”-named file there, delete it as well.

4. Open Mail. It will tell you that your mail needs to be “imported”. Click Continue and Mail will proceed to re-create Envelope Index — Mail says it’s “importing”, but it just re-creates the index if the mailboxes are already in Mail 2.x format.

Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.

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> If I want to see any of the mailboxes, I have to Force quit and

then start with the Space bar down.

The space bar? Why do you hold the space bar down? Do you mean the Shift key maybe?

Ooops! There is something much simpler that I should have told you to try first:

1. Either tell Mail to go offline immediately after opening it, or shut down your Internet connection and open Mail afterwards.

2. Go to Preferences > Junk Mail and disable junk mail filtering.

3. Go online again.

If it works fine now, that probably means the junk filter database has become corrupt, which you can fix by just resetting it ( Preferences > Junk Mail > Reset).

Look for additional information that may be available in the form of error messages written to the Console:

1. Open /Applications/Utilities/Console.

2. From the File menu, choose either Open Console Log, or Open System Log, or both, so that Console displays the contents of both system.log and console.log.

3. Reproduce the problem and look at the bottom of the Console windows for messages that might be written there as a result.

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Let’s try with the rules now:

1. Quit Mail if it’s running.

2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/.

3. Move any MessageRules.plist (Mail 2.x) and/or MessageSorting.plist (Mail 1.x) files to the Desktop. This is where Mail stores all the rules, including the rule that governs what the junk filter does.

4. Open Mail. As a result of having removed the rules files, the junk filter will be disabled now. You may want to either tell Mail to go offline immediately after opening it, or shut down the Internet connection before opening Mail, to prevent it from downloading anything until the junk mail filter has been enabled again.

5. Go to Preferences > Junk Mail and enable junk filtering.

6. Go online again if you went offline in step 4.

Hola David, estoy teniendo un problema parecido. Quiero dejar Entourage y moverme a Mail.app pero constantemente se congela la aplicacion. he seguido todos los pasos que mencionas, pero sin fortuna.estas son las caracteristicas de mi situacion,
Macbook pro
OS 10.4.10
Y nuestro sistema corporativo esta con servidor EXCHANGE
El console log me da:
SourceCache/Message/Message-752.3/Utilities.subproj/FoundationAdditions.m:649 to debug
2007-06-21 09:13:10.062 loginwindow[94] CFLog (21): dyld returns 2 when trying to load /Library/QuickTime/AviImporter-r7 (ppc).component/Contents/MacOS/AviImporter

Hola herrminto.

Your problem isn’t really the same. Discussing it here would reduce the usefulness of this thread for anyone that does have the same problem as the OP. Please either find a thread that really discusses the same problem, or start a new topic to properly discuss your problem in its own thread — you can post in Spanish if you wish, even though I’ll reply in English unless you don’t fully understand what I say (if for no other reason, because it allows me to copy & paste much of what I say).

Thank you, I already posted a new message: "Mail.app spins its wheel when used with Exchange Server". Hope you can help.
Hans

So why is everyone skirting the issue? The point is Macintosh OS is becoming what Microsoft was always criticized for: " Spinning wheel" is a non-responsive OS. OK - I can watch that for 15 seconds or so, but then I want some resolution to my request. Intel Duo processors can recreate the universe in 15 seconds - why can't it terminate iTunes or any other application? Aren't there any executive interrupts in existence anymore? In previous versions, I did a "force quit" and the culprit stopped - and I reaped the consquences. Nowadays, the same action just ignores your command and you don't know when and if what you have done has any effect. Dejavue MS except worse because after 20+ years, I continue to expect the most responsive OS. What happened? How many times have you been forced to do a power reset because of a non-responsive system? The range of applications (99.9% Apple supplied) hang without any warning or reason that I can predict. This is a sad direction for Apple to go - I can't believe that OS-X is being trampled by iTunes. Does anyone else care to complain?

McBk Mac OS X (10.4.10)

Worked for me too!!!

Removing the MessageRules.plst and MessageSorting.plist (and their associated backup files) did the trick!

Thanks David, you're a lifesaver!