My Mail program no longer functions since updating to Monterey, and it wasn't too healthy before that. It crashes every time I try to use it. I have switched to Outlook, which has its own issues. Any suggestions on the cause, or what I can do to re-load Mail?
MacBook Pro (2020 and later)
Try starting Mail while holding down the Shift key. That will open Mail without selecting a Mailbox or message.
If it opens, but then crashes when selecting a particular message, it may be something with that message.
If it is a message causing it, you may be able to delete the message from a web interface or disable the Preview pane.
Re-loading an app is superfluous. Nothing ever writes to an app, so it cannot become corrupt. It is the data that can become corrupt. The app should be able to handle that, but Mail has crashed due to some messages in the past.
Try starting Mail while holding down the Shift key. That will open Mail without selecting a Mailbox or message.
If it opens, but then crashes when selecting a particular message, it may be something with that message.
If it is a message causing it, you may be able to delete the message from a web interface or disable the Preview pane.
Re-loading an app is superfluous. Nothing ever writes to an app, so it cannot become corrupt. It is the data that can become corrupt. The app should be able to handle that, but Mail has crashed due to some messages in the past.
Thanks for the help. Now Mail won't open at all. I try to open while holding down the shift key, and the app just hangs up. I have to force quit every time, whether I try to open with Shift or not. There must be something wrong with my app.
There must be something wrong with my app.
That would be highly unlikely.
More likely is the configuration files.
Since you are using Outlook, there isn't much chance of losing anything in Mail, so can try several nuke and pave options.
The first is to remove the Envelop Index files from the MailData folder. Look in your user Library for the Mail folder. Inside will be a V9 folder. Open that and then open MailData. Delete all of the Envelope Index files (three).
Open Mail and see if it will work. It will re-index all of the messages, indicated by it downloading all of the email messages.
If that doesn't work…
Look in your user Library for the Containers folder. Inside that, find Mail. There may be several. Get Info in each and look at the Name and extension. The one named com.apple.mail is the one you want to delete.
Open Mail and see if it works. It will act like it is starting for the first time.
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