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Apple Mail keeps crashing on launch

I am running El Capitan 10.11.6 and my Apple Mail keeps quitting as soon as I launch it. It was working perfectly 2 days ago. How can I resolve this?

MacBook Pro 17″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Dec 7, 2020 4:18 PM

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Posted on Dec 9, 2020 7:17 AM

Press and hold a Shift key while launching Mail from Applications or the Dock. Release the Shift key when Mail opens.


That action causes the Mail app to open with no message selected.

5 replies

Jan 3, 2021 6:19 PM in response to cymia

Yes. Open (Apple menu) > System Preferences... > Internet Accounts and remove the problematic email account. Then, add that email account again. Those steps are described in Add or remove email accounts in Mail on Mac - Apple Support. Follow them in reverse order—in other words first remove, and then add that same account.


If you have more than one email service provider, remove them one at a time. Launch Mail after each account removal, to determine if you removed an affected account.

Jan 3, 2021 3:14 PM in response to John Galt

John -


I'm having the same problem and the SHIFT key trick helps. However, there is some issue with one of my mailboxes that seems to be creating the crash. As long as I don't select the 4QS mailbox my Mail app works fine. When I select my 4QS account Mail crashes. This is an IMAP account that I've deleted and recreated multiple times. It seemed to work for a couple of weeks but now it's crashing again and I've had no luck with recreating it. I've also logged in to the webmail account and removed everything but a few needed messages.


Any other ideas?

Apple Mail keeps crashing on launch

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