mac email Inbox slow to open

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IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

mac email Inbox slow to open

I am experiencing a very odd behaviour with Mail on my MacBook Pro running the El Capitan operating system. Every now and then Mail's Inbox is very slow to open. I have since found that this is caused when I receive an email from one particular company. When I delete the email the inbox works fine but if I then I find the Trash box it is slow to open until I remove the email from it.

I have forwarded the email to a different email address and opened it in Outlook on the same Macbook and it doesn't cause a problem. However, if I send it back to Mac Mail it has the same problem.

I also forwarded the email to another Macbook with a later OS and it had no problems.

Has anyone got any ideas on how to diagnose this problem. The email is in HTML and is only 32kB long

MacBook Pro 13", OS X 10.11

Posted on Apr 27, 2019 5:50 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Apr 27, 2019 7:22 PM in response to IanD1953

I'm not sure this will help, but see if the behavior is the same when booted into the Safe Mode.

Safe Mode - About

If it works in the Safe Mode, try running this program when booted normally and then copy and paste the output in a reply. The program was created by Etresoft, a frequent contributor. Please use copy and paste as screen shots can be hard to read. Click “Share Report” button in the toolbar, select “Copy to Clipboard” and then paste into a reply. This will show what is running on your computer. No personal information is shown. If the log won’t post, try posting it in Pastebin and provide a link in a reply Pastebin

Etrecheck – System Information

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

May 1, 2019 10:03 AM in response to IanD1953

You are running a lot of 3rd party software. Except for SIMBL, I don't see any known trouble makers. I suggest you go to System Preferences/Users & Groups, access your account, and after remove all your login items. Then restart the computer and do not open any software except for Mail. See if anything changes.

SIMBL is a system hack. Try removing it.

SIMBL Uninstall See solution posted by Linc Davis .

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Answer 3

IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

Apr 27, 2019 11:21 PM in response to Eric Root

Thanks Eric,

I tried that and the behaviour is the same in safe mode. The activity monitor is showing about 72% CPU usage and there are two mail web content process on at 199.5% and the other 96.6%.

I am wondering if there is some interaction going on between Mac Mail and the ISPs mail server. About a year ago my iSP changed from ASDL to fibre and after that Mac Mail couldn't access my email account. In the end I had delete the account on Mac Mail and set it up again. The email account setup on Outlook was with the same ISP and it had no problem. Since, then Mac Mail has behaved differently. I have multiple devices accessing the same email account. In the past the emails appeared as unread on the Macbook until I opened them on the Macbook but now they change to read as soon as another devices downloads them.

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Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

684,045 points

Apr 28, 2019 10:18 AM in response to IanD1953

You are welcome. If the account is an IMAP account, it is set up to be in sync with the server, but since this is only affecting emails from one company, I wouldn't think the interaction is the problem. If you forward the email to yourself, does the new email act the same way?

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Answer 5

IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

Apr 28, 2019 3:32 PM in response to Eric Root

Yes it is an IMAP account associated with the Mac Mail app. I am fairly sure it was originally setup as POP but when I set it up again it probably automatically configured IMAP.

If I send the email to myself it still has the same problem. The really odd thing is the email slows down access to all emails in the Inbox. As a workaround I have just setup a rule to move any emails from that company to a seperate folder.

When I started this investigation I had already deleted the email from Mac Mail but I had forwarded it to another email address which was configure on Outlook. When I forwarded the Outlook copy back to Mac Mail it had the same problem. However, I have just repeated the exercise and now the copy of the email from Outlook is OK.

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Answer 6

IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

May 2, 2019 2:25 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks Eric, I am still working through your suggestions. Looking at the login items was worthwhile because there were a few redundant items that needed cleaning up. I am removing the rest step by step.

One thing I noticed was when the folder containing the problem email is selected the fontd process runs at about 90%. The email always opens correctly and when it opens the fontd process drops to 0%.

I have another user account set up the same machine. This account has very few added apps but it has the same problem with the email. I also set up my email account on a spare machine running High Sierra and that no problems with the email.

I have a lot of earlier emails from the same company that are ok. It is only the later emails causing the problem. I am beginning to think the earlier version of Mail is incompatible with some minor change they have made to their HTLM code.

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Answer 7

IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

May 4, 2019 11:38 PM in response to Eric Root

The emails that are causing me a problem are promotional emails from a noreply email address at a large Telco so there is

not much hope of getting them to help. In the past I have received several HTML from the same email address

without any problems but the last four have jammed my Inbox.

I suspected that there might be a problem in their HTML code so I used the email’s source to regenerate the HTML code in

CoffeeCup. I was then able to open the HTML code in Safari and copy it into an Open Outlook email and resend it. All the images in the email are on separate websites so this worked perfectly. I then tried doing the same using Mac Mail. When I pasted into Mail the HTML code didn’t render properly but I sent it anyway. After that my Mail Sent items box jammed and the only way I could clear it was to abort the fontd process using Activity Monitor.

The odd thing is that since I aborted the fontd process the original email is now opening without a problem. I guess I now have to wait for another promotional email to continue the investigations.

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Answer 8

IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

May 8, 2019 8:47 PM in response to IanD1953

I am now able to reproduce the problem using a HTML email I generated myself.

The problem email contains a large group of an unprintable character which appears in the source code listing as: =E2=80=8D. The character is known as "zero width joiner" and has HTML code ‍ . I put this character and a printable character the "flower punctation mark" ⁕ (E2 81 95) into the <body> of a HTML file. I then opened the file in Safari and copied and pasted the code into new email.

The behaviour of this email is exactly the same as the original problem email. When it arrives Mac Mail beachballs and the Fontd process goes into panic. Aborting fontd clears the problem and there is no further issue until the Mail app is closed and reopened. My guess is that fontd is having a problem with this one character.

I have no idea what this character is intended to do. Removing them seems to have no impact on the original HTML page. If I resend the email from Outlook it removes this character. I also looked an earlier emails from the same sender and it didn't use this character.

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Answer 9

IanD1953 Author

Level 1

42 points

May 12, 2019 4:02 AM in response to IanD1953

I have found out why the zero width joiner is being used. It is used in a long string:  &zwj; &zwj…………. at a hack designed to control the emails preview. This website explains it: https://litmus.com/blog/the-little-known-preview-text-hack-you-may-want-to-use-in-every-email

Initially, I noted that just a couple of zwj characters caused the problem but I have not been able to repeat this. To get the problem I need a long string of  &zwj; ….. characters. Short strings don’t cause a significant problem but as I increase the length of the string the problem gets worse.

N.B. &zwj; ‍ ‍ are alternative ways to insert a zwj character in HTML

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