The Mac mail app opens with separate blank draft, I am unable to delete.

1. Just check your outbox to see if there was an email that was chocked and has not gone out.
2. If yes, then delete it or resend it out.
3. It is okay with your email App now.

Actually I tried to figure out the same problems many times. Finally I fixed it just with this simple way. No need to take any actions.

Had the same problem on a 14" MacBook Pro running macOS Ventura 13.1, and finally fixed it.

I was having blank, greyed out windows appeared over Mail that looked like an empty 'compose' mail window except that it was completely greyed out and I could not type in it or close it. I could resize it or minimize it, but it would never go away. The number of blank windows would vary - from 1-2 to 6-8 - without any clear reason why.

I tried all the usual fixes - force quit Mail; turned off my Mail internet accounts, rebooted, and turned them back on; rebuilt each internet account's mailbox; opened Mail w/ shift key pressed; deleted preferences files; ran laptop in safe mode; ran Disk Utility; even reinstalled Ventura OS - but nothing made the blank windows go away.

Called Apple Tech support and spent time with a senior tech diagnosing the problem and trying to fix it with no joy (He told me this is not a problem that has been widespread - I was first time he had seen it - and showed me this discussion thread with a few others who seemed to have a similar problem.) UNTIL the tech suggested we turn off accounts one at a time to see if that affected the number of blank windows (it did!) and then went looking into the outboxes of the internet mail accounts, especially the one that seemed to have the largest effect on the number of blank windows displayed. There was ONE old email (response to an event invitation) that had not been sent for some reason. Soon as we deleted that one outbox email and closed / opened Mail the problem was gone! The email had no attachments or large file size, was just a simple 'decline' to an event invitation that got stuck in the outbox.

I'm not yet certain the problem has been solved for good, but at least now I have a path to fix it without having to do a bunch of software reinstalls.

I hope this experience is helpful to others. I spent a lot of time trying to fix the problem and owe the solution to a committed and diligent Apple tech support individual who kept looking until we found something just a little unusual that was causing the problem...

good sleep wrote:

The Mac mail app opens with a separate blank copy of a draft form that will not send or close. I have tried to delete it but nothing works.

Quit Mail— when you relaunch the Mail.app hold the Shift key down and compare your results.

If you can not quit Mail then >Force Quit>Mail

Mail User Guide for Mac - Apple Support

Hi ,

I am facing the same problem with INTEL MAC27 running VENTURA. Every time when I click new email to open, blank window opens up. This can not be closed by clicking Red Cross button. Over a period multiple windows are opened and mail is required to Force quit to close all open blank windows

This problem is not there with M1 MAC and M2 Mac book pro

All are running on Ventura

If the blank window appears after you send mail - it may be caused by an email that is not successfully sending and stuck in your outbox. Suggest you check the outbox of each of your mail accounts to see if there's an email that's getting stuck and causing Mail to create a blank window.

Thank you many of us do not have any email in an outbox. Since there is no email we dont have an outbox showing as it is designed. So we have just a frozen window, further Macmail is stripping the default smtp account ( I have multiple email addresses in my macmail interphase) . Is apple going to do anything? I suspect it is this default smtp issue every time this happens I have to force quit. I go back in settings and reestablish the default SMTP account for each account. Email works for a few and then it happens again.

good sleep wrote:

It's not the app itself that won't close, it's a blank send form window that opens right after the app opens and can't be closed. The shift open results in the same blank send form opening.

If you followed through with all recommendations above and no resolve...

Quit all running Applications.

 Reboot into SafeBoot How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Login in and test, reboot as normal and test, compare your results.

I have exactly the same problem. My short-term get-around is to open a new viewer window (under 'File'), but the blank draft window keep re-appearing as I work in Mail. The problem seems to be getting progressively worse...

I had the same problem that started with Ventura 13.1. Turns out this also happens if you send an email with an attachment that is too large and gets rejected by the mail server. Once you delete the mail from the outbox, this problem goes away.

Apple needs to fix this problem but at a minimum ensure you don't need to shut down the mail tool to close the empty mail window.

What finally fixed it for me was deleting an old email stuck in the outbox of one of my mail accounts that had not been successfully sent.

Turning the accounts off an on again did not work for me, but you can try it at: Mail pulldown menu>Accounts>Internet Accounts>[select an internet account]. The account will show what you have set to synch over the internet. (e.g. mail, contacts, calendars). Click on the left slide of the blue slider that's been selected. (That turns off the setting.) Back out of that account and you can turn off others the same way. I then exited, rebooted, etc. but it did not fix my problem.

I am seeing the same issue has anyone had this in 13.2? No need to figure it out if it’s not happening on 13.2. I know Force quoting solves the problem but no thinking I'm Supposed to be forced to force quit every other day. Thank you for all the posts

I resolved this issue going to: Mail > Settings > Accounts and verified all accounts and guaranteed in the sub-tab 'Server Settings' of each account the 'Outgoing Mail Account' is the one respective for that account.

Well done. I do believe you've identified the underlying cause: an unsent email in the outbox of one of my accounts. As soon as I deleted this, problem went away. (This is still pretty buggy behaviour on Mail's part, though, I must say. Such a workaround should not be required at all.)

I have a MacBook Pro purchased in Feb 2023 M2 chip. This problem just surfaced about 2 weeks ago. I have done all the above. Called Apple and did safe mode and problem persisted. Now I need to uninstall Ventura and reinstall. I note above that this did not solve the problem for at least one person. I am dreading doing that because I had so many incompatibilities with other applications (Dropbox, etc) although Apple reassures me that the current version of Ventura is much more compatible than the first version.

Has anyone solved this and, importantly, figured out WHY this has developed?

TY, Frankie