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Updated to Big Sur, mail app opens with no windows

After Big Sur update, MacBook Air, open mail and there are no windows and I can find no way to get them back. The menu is the at the top of the screen. I have tried closing Mail and removing the dock icon and replacing it. I have tried making sure minimize to docks is not checked. As I said the app is open. There are just no windows. I can click to open open a new window in the menu and it will be in the list of open windows on the menu, but it will not show on the screen. This is the only app this is happening in. Everything else is working fine. I am also getting notifications of mew emails, only the notifications appear, no email window. Also, I have to use Force Quit to close Mail. Best, Scott

Posted on Nov 18, 2020 6:33 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Nov 18, 2020 2:36 PM

I had the same problem. Solved by following these steps:


  1. Force quit Mail-app
  2. Open Mail-app from Applications Folder in Finder (not from Dock)
  3. Received notification that "Mail was forced to quit while trying to open windows" (or something like that)... Got asked if I wanted to "Reopen" or "Not reopen" windows. Chose to NOT reopen windows.
  4. Voila! Mail was back up and running.


I hope this can help you.

15 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Nov 18, 2020 2:36 PM in response to brastedhouse

I had the same problem. Solved by following these steps:


  1. Force quit Mail-app
  2. Open Mail-app from Applications Folder in Finder (not from Dock)
  3. Received notification that "Mail was forced to quit while trying to open windows" (or something like that)... Got asked if I wanted to "Reopen" or "Not reopen" windows. Chose to NOT reopen windows.
  4. Voila! Mail was back up and running.


I hope this can help you.

Dec 15, 2020 4:09 PM in response to brastedhouse

The solution above did not work for me. But I could get the mail window back following the steps below:


  1. Selected the mail app which shows the app menu on top (without the window).
  2. Then minimised the app by clicking minimise option from window menu.
  3. That showed the app minimised in the dock.
  4. Then clicked on the minimised app icon in the dock.
  5. That showed the mail app window in the middle of the screen like a tiny dot.
  6. I had to manually hold and drag the window to make it look like normal.


Hope it helps.

Dec 15, 2020 4:47 PM in response to shaila309

This happened to me--no mail window opened with the icon on the dock, although the menu was there. I tried a lot of things including those mentioned here, but nothing worked, so I called AppleCare. The problem turned out to be that I was on Desktop 2, not Desktop 1. Never knew there was such a thing, don't know how I got there. You can get back to Desktop 1 by pressing Command + F3.

Dec 23, 2020 5:46 AM in response to brastedhouse

Been banging my head on this -- reset PRAM and that didn't work either.

HOWEVER --- going to email menu item 'Window' and clicking on 'Minimize' put the invisible mail windows into the dock where I can see it. Clicking on the minimized window in the dock then took it to desktop visible. Sounds stupid to you? Yeah me too but it worked.

Mar 27, 2021 3:37 PM in response to brastedhouse

Ugh, none of these have worked for me. The mail app starts, but no panels will show until minimized, including message viewer, preferences, etc. When minimized, the panel appears and minimizes to the icon on the dock, but a single or double click on the dock icon will not restore the panel. I have been using the menu options Window>Message Viewer to get the panel to open on the desktop. The mail panels should open on the desktop, and when minimized, restored to the desktop from the dock icon, which is not happening for me.

Updated to Big Sur, mail app opens with no windows

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