Mail unexpectedly quits when viewing a message

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Level 1

16 points

Mail unexpectedly quits when viewing a message

Hi,

I have 5 e-mail accounts set up - 3 gmail using pop forwarding and 2 other pop accounts. When I load Mail, it can fetch mail from all accounts without a problem. However, double clicking to view any message, from any of the accounts, will crash Mail. It opens the window in which the e-mail should appear and then crashes about 5s later.

I have tried:
Removing the cache <account name>/Library/Caches/com.apple.Mail - no effect.
Removing the plist <account name>/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist - no effect. At this setting up one account (because removing plist removes the account setting) and trying to view an e-mail still crashes Mail.
Safe boot (<shift> on restart) - no effect.
Removing all FW and USB devices - no effect.
Removing all preferences by dragging the Preferences folder to desktop from <account name>/Library/ - no effect. This means that no prefs including startup apps and dock are run, and I needed to setup one account in Mail to test. Trying to view the e-mail still crashed Mail.

The one thing that does work is setting up a new account (I called mine test) and setting up the pop account in that. It picked up 30 messages and I can view each one. If that works, I don't understand what settings I'm missing in my account that could be causing the problem.

What do you recommend I try next?

Thanks,

Tris.

iMac Alu 24" (2.4 Ghz, 3 Gb RAM), Mac OS X (10.5.2), Mail v 3.2

Posted on Feb 14, 2008 9:44 AM

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Answer 1

Triskaideka Author

Level 1

16 points

Feb 15, 2008 4:45 AM in response to Triskaideka

Okay, all sorted after a call to Apple Technical support.

Issue - Mail crashed when trying to view a message.

This happened after setting up one account, so the number of accounts I had was not a problem.

The crash message showed the error:
Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'trying to set a non-ToDo MailboxUid for a ToDo. The MailboxUid for a ToDo must be a ToDosMailboxUid'

I presume that this error is related to the way that iCal's to do list items and Mail link up. The wrong sort of object is being created. Mail doesn't like this and exits.

To solve:

1) Backup your iCal data with iCal File > Backup first. If anything goes wrong in the next steps you can use iCal File > Restore to restore your iCal data to it's current state.

2) Delete all the to do items. Mail then worked fine for me. Check this is the case after a restart.

* At this point, restoring with iCal File > Restore > yourBackupFileName.icbu will re-introduce the problem. *

3) You can backup and reimport your iCal to do lists using .ics files instead. One way to do that is to:

a) select one calendar from the calendar list, selecting all the to dos (select item top of list and <shift> click item at bottom of list) and drag this selection to the desktop.

b) Rename the item including the calendar name e.g. To Do Items Home.ics.

c) Repeat a & b for each calendar's to do lists.

d) Check the name of the calendar you want to import into, on the calendar list.

e) Drag the "To Do Items CalName.ics"; file, for that calendar, to the to do list.

f) Repeat d & e for each calendar.

I think this must be to do with restoring an iCal .icbu file from a Tiger version of iCal, which is where my original came from. Therefore, by importing the to do lists with .ics files, your to do list exists in "Leopard iCal" format which doesn't cause problems with Mail. I'll file this as a bug report and workaround.

HTH

Tris.

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