Mail hangs when dragging anything into Dock Icon

Question

Mail hangs when dragging anything into Dock Icon

Hi, I have an odd issue. I rarely use the mouse to perform drag & drop operations, as I use quicksilver most of the time, however, from time to time, I just "drag" pictures (screen captures) to the Dock Icon of Mail to quickly send 'em over.

I have mail open 99% of the time so it's running. Apart from the odd "duplicate message" that I got used to, something strange started happening lately. I found this out a few days ago but didn't do anything until today where I tried to find a solution (without success).

The thing is, I drag a picture (or many) or a chunk of text or whatever you imagine, to Mail's Dock Icon. Automatically one "empty" message is created (as usual since Leopard) and then, when the second window appears, it remains empty and spin ball appears. I have to force quit Mail.

Things I've tried:

- Reindex Mail (removing envelope). Not fixed.
- Reboot (of course!). Not Fixed.
- Try with Mail Closed or Opened in advance (same results).
- Read the logs: Couldn't find anything interesing and/or related.
- Submit crash reports: did it at least 10 times.

I've run out of ideas. It's very annoying because I happen to do that from time to time... :S

Other details I've found after further inspection:

Mail appears to enter into some sort of LOOP. Because RAM starts growing and growing until no ram is left (2GB) and therefore, Swapping starts. Taking a look at Activity Mon shows exactly that.

Any pointer that could give me a hint where to start?

I'd appreciate that, thanks.

P.S: I have enought HDD space left (7gigs), I've tried with a cold reboot, open mail, drag. Same result. I haven't repaired permissions (but will try, tho I have the feeling that it doesn't have anything to do).
I don't know exactly when this started, but for sure it used to work "a few days ago".

Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro 15'' 2.0, Mac OS X (10.5.2), iPod Touch 8GB, Fast Trak Pro USB Audio IF, Guitar Rig 3 Audio IF

Posted on Mar 24, 2008 10:12 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 24, 2008 10:27 AM in response to Martin Marconcini

I have to add that I did have Letterbox and Spamsieve as bundles, but have since then removed them and still have the same issue. So far, my Bundles folder is now Empty.

Sorry for missing that in the original message.

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Answer 2

Mar 24, 2008 12:36 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

More follow up:

Under a new user, this doesn't happen.
I've moved my library/Mail to a safe location, and replaced it with a Time Machine copy from 15 days ago. It works fine there, doesn't hang. If I place my original back, it fails, so the problem lies within the library/Mail folder.

I'm investigating what could it be. :S

Any suggestions?

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Answer 3

Mar 24, 2008 3:49 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

Well, after wasting an entire afternoon investigating this, here's what I found; I post here in case somebody experiences the same.

I Deleted my entire Mail (home/library/Mail) and even my com.apple.mail preference. So I started on a fresh Mail, recreated one of my accounts and empty as it was, I tried to drag something. It worked.

I started adding my stuff back, thinking that it could have been a problem with my preference. I recreated all my accounts back, reimported all the mails, moved 'em to their appropiate places, copied my rules, my smartfolders, etcétera.

It was working fine.

I reconfigured mail again (check interval, list fonts, etc.). And I re-added my signatures.

Somewhere in the middle of that, it *STARTED HANGING AGAIN!!!*

Oh my god. What was it?

No idea. So I decided to start again, and this time, test after EACH single step.

So I found out that it only happens when you have a signature. If I created a signature, dragging a picture to the mail icon, locked the program. If I force quit, remove signature and try again, it worked.

Ok, I though. My Signatures are broken. Let's just removed 'em and create them all over again.

No success. If you had a signature (even the default when you press + to add one) it fails.
I was about to continue living without signatures but I said: nah, this used to work before!
So I decided to restore all over again, step by step.

To make a long story short, I found out that if you have "PLAIN TEXT" (not default I think) AND a signature, it fails. If, having signatures, I use "Rich Text" by default it works.

After I found out that, I restored my Mail and preferences from time machine's archive, and modified Mail's setup to use Rich Text and it worked.

So I don't know if this is a common issue, if it's just a "my machine only" issue or what, but what I know is that if you have Use Plain Text and a signature, when you drag a picture to the mail's icon, it hangs.

Could somebody try this and confirm it?

Thanks.

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Answer 4

diarrhea

Level 1

0 points

Mar 24, 2008 3:52 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

It works, I've had the same problem for 2 weeks or so, but now you fixed it. Good work, man!!!

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Answer 5

Mar 24, 2008 4:11 PM in response to diarrhea

Glad to hear that you have had the same issue and this fixed it; unfortunely I'm sure that I didn't touch that preference in ages, so a couple of weeks ago, an update must have broken it.

I know this because Plain Text is one of the 1st things I set up (for Mailing lists that do not like Rich text). And I have had the same signatures for "ages". So this used to work but somehow now it doesn't.

I don't have much more time to investigate it further but somebody will come up with a better idea I suppose. 🙂

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Answer 6

Mar 26, 2008 2:40 AM in response to Martin Marconcini

I think that I've found the problem. It could be related to the new Webkit. The new Webkit in Safari 3.1 breaks a few things with formatting within mail, for example, check this:

http://daringfireball.net/2008/03/mailquotingbug

Now that I think of it, Apple released Safari 3.1 on March 18, 2008 which is possibly the moment this stopped working.

SInce mail uses WebKit in the Message View, this is probably the cause of it all. Regression bug anyone? 🙂

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Answer 7

Mar 26, 2008 3:45 AM in response to Martin Marconcini

I have filed a radar bug: 5821304.

Let's just hope that we can see light in the subject.

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Answer 8

seed

Level 1

0 points

Mar 27, 2008 1:04 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

Hey, I have the exact same problem. The workaround works but I still prefer plain text messages. Thanks for the diagnostic work.

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Answer 9

Mar 28, 2008 12:11 PM in response to seed

That is exactly the problem. This bug has indeed come in the last two weeks and yes, you can drag files to the Mail Dock icon to attach them ONLY if you are sending HTML email (assuming you have a sig in your mail). As a business user, I of course have a signature, and also prefer Plain Text, as it causes less problems. So this bug, which has occurred after an update of something (Safari?) is a real pain.

I also like dragging multiple attachments to the Dock as the quickest way to set up a new mail.

Well done for figuring out what the issue is by trial and error (I couldn't figure it!). Now we need to get Apple to fix it. I will write a support note now and link to this thread.

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Answer 10

ntaf

Level 1

5 points

Mar 28, 2008 2:15 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

I have exactly the same issue, using text mail (as a religion 🙂 and signatures, and i am so much accustomed to drag attachments on the mail dock icon, that i happen to hang mail dozens of times a day, even knowing i should not drag (nooooooooooooo !).
I also noticed that going to mail.app finder's info panel and disabling mailWebPlungin.bundle solves the issue BUT then, of course, no picture is displayed anymore in mails. Which is bad too. i'll try your solution while waiting for apple to solve this (hoping it will be fast). thanks for investigating?

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Answer 11

Apr 1, 2008 12:52 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

I have the exact same problem. Thanks for the detective work. Unfortunately rich text does not work well with blackberries. The attachments get dropped if the message is sent as rich text. Updating permissions did not help.

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Answer 12

Apr 1, 2008 1:05 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

You're welcome to everybody. 😉

I can confirm that this bug appeared with Webkit 3.1.

So the workarounds are:

a) Use Richtext (not an option if you use Blackberry or need plaintext)
b) Use Plaintext but remove the signatures (can be a Pain In the A** if you use different business accounts like me with odd disclaimers that are a "must").
c) Roll back to Safari 3.0* and either use it or use Camino/Opera/Firefox/Etc. Could be a problem if you rely on Safari stuff like Inquisitor, 1Password, etc.
d) Don't drag attachments to the dock icon… well.

Until then, we'll have to wait for a fix. I switched to RichText for the moment.

😟

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Answer 13

Barney-15E

Level 10

112,566 points

Apr 2, 2008 8:08 AM in response to Martin Marconcini

I investigated your Webkit theory and it does hold true, but it also works if I disable the ToDo plugin and keep Webkit functional. I can remember some early issues with ToDo's, but not specific info. Anybody got ideas? Perhaps the ToDo plugin did not get replaced/updated or the new Webkit broke it again.

Edit: I bounced into this thread with a link from another problem. Thought it was the same. I don't have hanging issues, but the ToDos seem to work fine without the Mail plugin selected in the Get Info window of Mail. However, if anybody has the hang issue, try disabling ToDo Plugin for mail and see what happens.

Message was edited by: Barney-15E

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Answer 14

Apr 2, 2008 8:36 AM in response to Barney-15E

Barney,

Have you tried this:

a) Put Plain Text in the preferences for Composing.
b) Add a signature (it doesn't matter if it's plaintext or not) and assign it to your accounts.
c) Make sure you installed Safari 3.1
d) Close Mail and reopen (not really necessary but just in case)
e) Drag anything (a picture will do) to the mail Icon.

Mail should hang with only Force Quit as an option to exit.

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Answer 15

Apr 2, 2008 8:58 AM in response to Martin Marconcini

OK, I am another one.
My Mac run Tiger 10.4.11
It hang when I want attaching file ( move files to the mail app. icon or attaching by original way)
I use only plain text with my signature.
It really annoy me that I cannot sent the attached mail by this way.

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Mail hangs when dragging *anything* into Dock Icon

Mail hangs when dragging anything into Dock Icon