Mail won't load...reinstall?

Question

Level 1

0 points

Mail won't load...reinstall?

I upgraded to 10.5.2 and haven't been able to get mail to load at all. It crashes every time I try to load it and tells me to report to Apple. Before, in my PC days, I would have reinstalled the program. Since I'm a mac newb I am wondering how to reinstall a program like mail that comes with the OS. Or if there is another, simpler, solution. I am using mail with my gmail account via IMAP.

Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.2)

Posted on Feb 20, 2008 2:17 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Király

Level 6

10,017 points

Feb 20, 2008 2:21 PM in response to jaredcoe

Go to your home folder -> Library -> Preferences, and delete com.apple.mail.plist. You will probably have to rebuild your mail accounts in Mail preferences. See if that clears it up.

Generally, when OS X applications start to misbehave, it is usually a problem with a corrupt preferences or cache file that is the culprit. The application itself is rarely at fault. A good troubleshooting first step is to log in to a different user account and try the application there.

Reply

Answer 2

jaredcoe Author

Level 1

0 points

Feb 20, 2008 9:10 PM in response to Király

Thanks, I'll give that a shot and see what happens.

Reply

Answer 3

jaredcoe Author

Level 1

0 points

Feb 20, 2008 10:12 PM in response to Király

I tried it and set up my gmail imap account again and it kept doing the same thing. Any other ideas? It did crash before I got gmail set up, but I launched it again and it seemed to work. Once imap was set up it went back to crashing before it even go started

Reply

Answer 4

Kyburo

Level 1

0 points

Feb 28, 2008 3:16 PM in response to jaredcoe

I have exactly the same issue. Since a software update about a week ago, whenever i try and open my mail client it just crashes before properly opening.

After deleting the mail.plist (as stated above) my Mail client opened correctly and asked me to enter my email account information. But when i fill it all in again with my gmail details using IMAP it goes back to crashing again without even opening.

Anyone have any ideas on a fix? Otherwise for the time being I'll just have to use my browser for Gmail.

Reply

Answer 5

neirbo

Level 1

0 points

Mar 1, 2008 12:42 PM in response to jaredcoe

Hmm, I loaded the latest software updates last Thursday night. My wife's mail will not start after the updates. The mail icon on the bar looks normal after os restart. Then after trying to launch mail, a question mark appears over the mail icon.

Mail in my profile works just fine.

Reply

Answer 6

neirbo

Level 1

0 points

Mar 1, 2008 1:19 PM in response to jaredcoe

shortly after posting my message I resolved the problem by using Time Machine to restore the mail program from a date prior to the 10.5.2 update.

Reply