I have an older iMac running El Capitan. Mail has been working flawlessly since I upgraded to El Capitan over a year ago. Yesterday, mail crashed when downloading mail and now it immediately shuts down every time it is started. The iMac was rebooted in Safe Mode with no change in the result. Any idea of the next steps? Is it possible to reload mail without reloading the entire OS?
iMac, OS X 10.11
Hi MailCrash,
We understand that mail is crashing every time you open it. Let's try holding down the Shift key and reopen mail. Mail should open without any message or mailbox selected. Continue to hold the Shift key until a message appears. After doing so, close the Mail app and open it as your normally would.
You can also check this out. If an app freezes or quits unexpectedly on Mac
Take care.
Holding down the shift key worked. I let the application download the backlog of mail without selecting inbox then shutdown Mail and reopened it and the application appeared to work normally. Thank you!
Thanks for the suggestion.
When I tried it Mail opened without any message selected. When I tried to select Inbox it crashed again, with or without my finger on the Shift key. How long do I need to keep my finger on the Shift key before a message comes up automatically?
GregV
Hey MailCrash,
We're glad to know that you were able to get this sorted out with your Mail app. Thanks for connecting with us at Apple Support Communities. .
Have a great day!
This seems to have worked for me. Safe Boot did not. I am running El Capitan 10.11.6 on a Late 2009 Dual Core iMac
Mail Immediately Shuts Down when Started
