Why Cannot my IMOVIE be Saved, , Emailed or burn to DVD!? it's so hard!!

Hello mid-century guy,

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities. I understand you've been running into some issues in iMovie.

Starting with saving your projects, iMovie should be saving your work as you go automatically, so there's not a save option like you'd find in some other apps. This is outlined here for reference: iMovie for Mac: Create a new movie. Are you able to re-open your projects from the Projects view in iMovie? If you're finding your projects aren't saving and iMovie shuts down while in use, there may be a few factors to look at.

First, what's the exact text of the error message you receive when iMovie shuts down? Does it only shut down when you trying to send via email, or under other circumstances as well? To look at it from another angle, are you able to send email as expected through the Mail app at the moment?

The best place to start is to make sure iMovie is updated. To do this, open the App Store and click Updates; if any appear for iMovie, install those, and then test it out.

If this doesn't resolve the issue, click Apple menu () > Restart and give it another try. Feel free to report back to the Apple Support Communities with the results.

Cheers!

Hi mid-century guy,

We appreciate that follow-up information.

Since the issue seems to happen when you try sharing via email, I recommend a few steps to try narrowing things down.

If you open the Mail app on your Mac and send a test email to yourself, does it go out and come back to your inbox? This will help make sure the issue isn't coming from the Mail side of things.

Also, you could try opening another app, like Pages or something similar, and then try sharing a file via email. Testing this would help work out if other apps might be experiencing the same issue with sharing.

I also recommend creating a test user account as shown here: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac. Once you create the temporary administrator account, log in there and test by creating a quick project in iMovie (you may need to send yourself a video/picture or two so you can do this part of the test). Then, try sharing using the same method to see if the issue occurs in this new user account. This test is valuable in working out if the issue is system-wide, or if it might be specific to the user account.

I hope this helps.

Take care.

Hello mid-century guy,

Thanks for the reply. Knowing that your Mail account works as expected helps. There are still steps you can take to resolve this.

Were you able to try sharing an iMovie project using the test user account steps suggested above? This would tell you if the issue is affecting usage of iMovie in just this user account, or it's an issue that's system-wide. Knowing that will help work out the best steps to take to clear up the issue (for example, reinstalling iMovie, or looking into possible user account issues).

You might also try booting your Mac into safe mode. This will prevent certain items from loading and it also runs a quick diagnostic and repair. If you find you're able to export/share while in safe mode, that narrows the issue down further: Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac.

If you're able to try these steps, feel free to reply back to the Apple Support Communities with the results: How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac.

Kind regards.