Mail crashes

Well stevemotuel, I hope I have better luck than you did, only time will tell.. .. he's my final summary (hopefully)

Complaint:  (El Capitan 10.11.6 on a Mid 2011 27” iMac 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16GB ram) Apple Mail program randomly crashes even when I am not actively in Mail using it. I have a two monitor system and Mail is always on one monitor while I do my work on the other monitor so I can see when Mail crashes and disappears off the monitor even if I am not using it.

Background:  Back in the spring of 2020, out of the blue, Mail started crashing on my iMac whenever I tried mass deleting iCloud emails that were in my Trash folder. I could delete maybe up to three or four at a time without issue but any more than that and Mail would crash. In a support call with Apple, we found that if I changed a setting in Mail preferences for the iCloud acct, the problem was solved. I don’t recall what that setting was now that I’m writing this but it had to do with one of the Mailbox behaviors related to how I wanted mail in the Trash managed. Apple support could not tell me what the root cause was and I knew I had not changed any settings in years so it was assumed that something changed at Apple as it related to how iCloud mail is managed.

Therefore when the problem I am having now started occurring, I think in the summer 2020 timeframe, I suspected it may have been my iCloud acct causing it but I didn’t want to make any changes in my settings so I contacted Apple Support again. However, this time there was no solution or work around and it was suggested I reload my OS. While I have done that several times over the years, its a lot of work and I just thought I would wait till I bought a new Mac instead. Then I found out that the new Mac’s built around the new Apple M1 chip were not going to be released in the larger MBP till sometime in 2021 so I knew I had to do something with my Mail crashing issue now.

Actions to date:  

1. Nov 29 2020: I deleted my one and only iCloud email acct from my iMac and left my several Gmail accts on it. 

2. Dec 4 2020: Its been five days without a Mail crash. Normally Mail would crash at least twice/day. 

2. Dec 4 2020: I reinstalled my iCloud email acct and configured its preferences the same as they were before deleting the acct

3. Dec 6 2020: Its been two days since reinstalling my iCloud email acct and I have not had any Mail crashes yet. I am also able to mass delete without issue.

Solution:

Deleting and reinstalling my iCloud account from my iMac seems to have fixed the Mail program random crashing. Note, I did not just uncheck Mail from my iCloud acct, I deleted the entire iCloud account off my iMac by signing out of my account in the iCloud System Preference screen. Yes, this also removed my iCloud calendar data but I knew at some point I would be signing back in so I just used the iCloud calendar on my phone in the meantime.

While I don’t know the root cause, sometimes we never do but am happy that my Mail crashes have not yet happened since reinstalling my iCloud acct two days ago. This was the simplest and least intrusive potential fix. Fingers crossed it stays this way.

Assuming by Mailbox you mean mail account, how many do you have? If more than one, how did you determine which one to delete and reinstall?

I have seven and am experiencing this issue as well. It started several months ago out of the blue, I worked with Apple over the phone and was able to solve the issue by changing a preference on my iCloud mail acct. That seemed to work up until a few weeks ago when Mail is crashing yet again and I have not changed any settings at all. I have one iCould mail acct and the rest are Gmail.

Complaint:  (El Capitan 10.11.6 on a Mid 2011 27” iMac 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7 with 16GB ram) Apple Mail program randomly crashes even when I am not actively in Mail using it. I have a two monitor system and Mail is always on one monitor while I do my work on the other monitor so I can see when Mail crashes and disappears off the monitor even if I am not using it.

Actions to date:  I deleted my one and only iCloud email acct from my iMac and left my several Gmail accts on it. Its been two days since I did that and its now been two days since the last crash. Normally Mail would crash at least twice/day. This is the only action I have taken on this issue to date.

Background:  Back in the spring of 2020, out of the blue, Mail started crashing on my iMac whenever I tried mass deleting iCloud emails that were in my Trash folder. I could delete maybe up to three or four at a time with out issue but any more than that and Mail would crash. In a support call with Apple, we found that if I changed a setting in Mail preferences for the iCloud acct, the problem was solved. I don’t recall what that setting was now that I’m writing this but it had to do with one of the Mailbox behaviors related to Trash. Apple support could not tell me what the root cause was and I knew I had not changed any settings in years so it was assumed that something changed at Apple as it related to how iCloud mail is managed.

Therefore when the problem I am having now started occurring, I think in the summer 2020 timeframe, I suspected it may have been my iCloud acct causing it but I didn’t want to make any changes in my settings so I contacted Apple Support again. However, this time there was no solution or work around and it was suggested I reload my OS. While I have done that several times over the years, its a lot of work and I just thought I would wait till I bought a new Mac instead. Then I found out that the new Mac’s built around the Apple M1 chip were not going to be released in the larger MBP (which is what I would like) till sometime in 2021 I knew I had to do something with my Mail crashing issue now.

I will wait another day or so before reinstalling my iCloud email acct on my iMac and will wait a few days after that to see what happens before posting another update.

Well, I'm saving an OS reload for the last resort. The worst part is how the Local Mailboxes get exported and reimported. For some reason when I export a local mailbox that has subfolders within it and then import that back into Mail, it does not place the subfolders within the main folder like it originally was. This creates a lot of work in getting them all back the way they were. Right, now, I have at least taken the time to remove all the subfolders and now just have " a lot" main folders in prep for having to reload the OS.

Yeah, that’s happening to a lot of us this week. No replicable solutions, yet.

Thanks stevemotuel,

I will attempt some testing but many times Mail crashes on me when I'm on my other monitor working in another program and not doing anything within Mail :-0 so I'm not going to hold my breath but maybe in the end I'll just delete and reinstall them all.