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User profile for user: adamnash
adamnash Author
User level: Level 1
11 points

Apple Mail Crashes on Message Import after macOS Ventura 13.1 Upgrade

Yesterday, I updated my iMac (27" from 2019) from macOS Ventura 13.0.1 to 13.1


When Apple Mail launched, it said I needed to do a Message Import. Given past experiences, I dreaded this. (I have about 867K messages in an archive over 100GB).


Normally, this takes about 30 minutes. Unfortunately, it crashes about 40% of the way through, at about 330K messages imported.


I have run my machine with no other processes running (in case it was a memory issue). It isn't.


I have run my machine in Safe Mode. Same issue.


I have deleted my Apple Mail preferences, and manually removed the Envelope Index files. Same issue.


From a priority standpoint, I don't want to lose my old saved email. However, it is a severe problem to not be able to use Apple Mail at all.


Any tips on what to do? The stack trace for the crash doesn't have anything obvious in it. The fact that it always crashes in the same place tells me that perhaps I could just move the problematic mailbox aside for now, but I'm not sure how to find the individual mailboxes anymore.


Is there anyway to get Apple Mail up and running, then import the old mailboxes one by one until I resolve the issue?


Any help appreciated. Not example the Christmas miracle that I had hoped for...

iMac 27″, macOS 13.1

Posted on Dec 25, 2022 4:43 PM

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User profile for user: adamnash
adamnash Author
User level: Level 1
11 points

Posted on Dec 25, 2022 5:22 PM

Well, I didn't solve the problem, but the workaround turned out be simple. Posting here so others can benefit.


Basically, the problem seems to have been a crash when downloading the archived email of a specific Gmail account. The clue was the crash always happened on the mailbox (as per the dialog) for "Gmail (all)"


Went into Internet Accounts, disabled Mail for it (and a few other account, since I wasn't sure)


Then relaunched Apple Mail. Message Import worked. Then re-enabled the other accounts one by one.


All good... but Apple should really rethink that massive Message Import process. Seems to be an unforgivably bad state to be left with Apple Mail that can't run, especially when it seems like it could just lazy import / connect to the various services.

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User profile for user: adamnash
adamnash Author
User level: Level 1
11 points

Dec 25, 2022 5:22 PM in response to adamnash

Well, I didn't solve the problem, but the workaround turned out be simple. Posting here so others can benefit.


Basically, the problem seems to have been a crash when downloading the archived email of a specific Gmail account. The clue was the crash always happened on the mailbox (as per the dialog) for "Gmail (all)"


Went into Internet Accounts, disabled Mail for it (and a few other account, since I wasn't sure)


Then relaunched Apple Mail. Message Import worked. Then re-enabled the other accounts one by one.


All good... but Apple should really rethink that massive Message Import process. Seems to be an unforgivably bad state to be left with Apple Mail that can't run, especially when it seems like it could just lazy import / connect to the various services.

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Apple Mail Crashes on Message Import after macOS Ventura 13.1 Upgrade

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