Mail.app crashes right after launch

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Mail.app crashes right after launch

Hi--

My friend has an iMac (9,1 24-inch, early 2009) running 10.11.6. In the Preferences pane, there is no icon for "Software Update", but his App Store "Updates" tab says "No updates available."

Problem: His "Mail.app" loads, shows a window, begins to populate a window, then Quits unexpectedly. A short while later, a crash report window appears. This scenario is repeatable.

He can use Chrome to access his WebMail.

Secondary problem (just for information): When he tries to use Safari to access his WebMail account, the Earthlink WebMail webpage says that his browser is obsolete. Earthlink says that they need Safari 11 or later. His Safari version is 11.1.2

I'm kinda stumped how to get his Mail.app working. What would you suggest I try next?

--Gil

iMac Line (2012 and Later)

Posted on Dec 12, 2020 12:19 PM

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Answer 1

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Gil Dawson Author

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134 points

Dec 13, 2020 5:20 AM in response to Gil Dawson

Thanks to you diligent Discussion Group contributors, I found a solution in these pages. Seems the problem was a corrupt message that crashed Mail.app when Mail.app tried to display the message. The message was selected in the inbox, and the Preview pane was open, so Mail would try to display the message on launch.

The procedure:

Holding down the Shift key, launch Mail.app. It will open the Message Viewer window showing your mailboxes, but it will not select a mailbox, and it will not try to display any message.
Select any mailbox besides the Inbox. This will populate the list of messages in that mailbox and display one of them in the Preview pane, as you would expect.
Close the Preview pane. (Drag the separator bar by its dot all the way.)
Select the Inbox. The Preview pane will remain closed, and the list of messages in your Inbox will appear.
Select the corrupted message (that's probably the message that was selected when you first selected the Inbox) and delete it. Simply trashing it could cause a problem later. Control-click opens a drop-down containing a Delete command.

An annoying artifact of this procedure is that, in my case, Mail.app's Preview window (still!) remains stuck closed, but that's for another thread.

--Gil

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Mail.app crashes right after launch

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