Problems with opening "preferences" in Apple Mail

Hi reinvent_ed,

Thanks for letting us know. In that case, let's take some steps to determine if the issue may be due to some incompatible login item or installed software.

What happens when you start your Mac in safe mode, and attempt to open Mail preferences there? The following guide explains how to start in safe mode:

How to use safe mode on your Mac

If the issue doesn't occur in safe mode, you'll want to isolate your login items using the steps in this guide:

If your Mac has a blue screen or other startup problems

If you find that the behavior is still occurring in safe mode, the next step would be to create a temporary new user account to see if it's occurring system-wide. Here's a guide with the steps to create a new user account:

Set up users, guests, and groups on Mac

Once you've created the new account, be sure to log out of your current account in order to log into the new one and test the Mail app there to see if Preferences will open.

Take care!

Hi reinvent_ed,

We appreciate you using our Apple Support Communities for help with this issue you're experiencing in the Mail app when attempting to open Preferences. Let's get to the bottom of this together.

Have you had a chance to quit and reopen Mail? If so, what happens after you restart your Mac?

If you still have issues please quit the Mail app once again and then hold the shift key down while launching the Mail app and see if you are then able to get the Mail preferences page to load.

Let us know if it helps, or if you've got any questions.

Have a great day!

I would try quitting mail, then moving the Mail Preferences files to the Desktop, then restart Mail and test. I would start with com.apple.mail-shared.plist and com.apple.mail.plist in your USER Library Preferences folder. To get there, paste this in to the Finder>Go>Go to folder... dialog box:

~/Library/Preferences

(Note the tilde.)