Apple Mail Crashes after Ventura 13.2

Hey there!

I may have a solution, just keep backups of your mail data whether through Time Machine, or exporting your mailboxes or both.....and if POP accounts......I’d do both, though most accounts now are IMAP.

Likewise if you have folders/mailboxes under the On My Mac section of your Mail app, I’d export those as well as a copy, (Even though Time Machine should have them), and if IMAP accounts, the data should all remain on the mail server to be re-downloaded again.

First Open System Settings > Internet Accounts.

Turn off Mail for all accounts there.

If any Mailboxes remain, you can export them:

Import or export mailboxes in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

Next, Quit the Mail app.

Open Finder.

While holding Option, on the top menu click Go > Library (Which appears about half way down the menu as long as holding Option).

From there, open the Mail folder.

Drag the V10 (or the equivalent V folder(s)) to your Desktop or another location just as an extra backup.

Restart your Mac.

While holding the Shift key, open the Mail app, (It should be empty for the most part).

Next go back to System Settings > Internet Accounts, and enable Mail for each account again.

If all works just fine, and your not missing any Mail or Mailboxes, you can just throw the V10, etc. folder you saved from the Desktop to the Trash bin, (Or just keep as a backup for your Mail).

Hope this helps!

Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

Having experienced the same problem with the Ventura Mail App for the last several days and after re-installing Ventura with no discernible positive effect, I stubbled upon this thread. After reading through all the proposed solutions and attendant successes and failures, I tried the following.

1. Turned off mail for all internet accounts via System Settings => Internet Accounts.
2. Restarted the Mail App - It opened!
3. Closed the Mail App.
4. Reactivated Mail for one of my internet accounts.
5. Restarted mail - It opened and downloaded new emails!
6. Repeated steps 3 through 5 for each of my accounts.

The Mail App has been up and running correctly now for about 30 minutes ... fingers crossed!

stevefromchandler wrote:

I upgraded to Ventura 13.2 and now my Mail crashes everytime I open it. Is anyone else having this problem? is there a solution?

When you go to launch the Mail.app hold the Shift key down, and compare your results.

No change— then try a Safe Boot  mode How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

Login and test, reboot as normal and test.

report back your success or failure.

Hey again!

Do you have other mail accounts set up in Apple Mail? And if so, does it work normally with your road runner account disabled? I believe that’s Spectrum, and as for Cox, I don’t even think they provide email service anymore to new users.

I’ve seen this in the past, but rarely with a specific provider only, and only on a specific OS version. So that info may help.

If you need to, give Apple a call, (Or Road Runner for that matter):

Contact Apple for support and service - Apple Support

I prefer the Mail app over a website for sure, so would want this fixed as well, luckily for me I don’t use any of these email providers.

Hope you get it sorted out!

Hey there!

I think the cause of yours is different. For this, (As well as Ndrz’ issue), I’d try the steps I provided here:

*.pdf Could not be opened - It may be dam… - Apple Community

Cheers, hope that helps.

stevefromchandler wrote:

I upgraded to Ventura 13.2 and now my Mail crashes everytime I open it. Is anyone else having this problem? is there a solution?

A - Would suggest updating to the Current Stable Release 13.4.1

The links below are directly related to the the above suggestion.

Once the computer is running the latest Ventura - Test if the issue persists

Keep your Mac up to date - Apple Support (CA)

Apple security updates - Apple Support (CA)

Dear DiZoE,

Your solution works like a charm. I've reposted your solution in another thread as more and more people are experiencing this problem.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/255044159?login=true&sortBy=best&answerId=260134525022

Thank you!

I had the same problem in Ventura 13.3.1. The following worked for me:

1. Quit Apple Mail
2. Turn off all mailaccounts in Systempreferences/Internetaccounts
3. Turn them on one by one and each time opening Apple Mail to see if it still crashes. Quit Mail every time before trying another account

In my case two mail accounts didn't cause Mail to crash. The third one did. In the Mail-preferences I noticed that the outgoing server of the 'bad' account had its connection-preferences set to Automatic and the other two hadn't. When I turned that off, Mail was fine again.

I hope this helps.

I finally noticed that there's a blank mail page covering the email list, when I minimize it, I can see my email once again. This blank page appears often with no input from me, Here's a screen shot of it,

The only live buttons are the gray minus and green plus, everything else is dead. This just appears out of nowhere! Bug.

I spent the weekend talking with tech support from, apple and the mail app still crashes, this all happened when I upgraded it to the Ventura 13.2

Nobody seems to know what is going on, we tried everything from removing the accounts, hold shift, new user, you name it nothing works, I even want to get an old mac that will have the old operating system just so I can have the email access. I may have to look for a 2018 MacBook, because the iMac and the new apple studio are not working.

I have what seems to be the same issue. After updating from Ventura 13.1.1 to 13.2 on my intel macs (MacBookPro and MacMini), the Apple Mail app opens initially, but then inevitably after about 1 minute just hangs, showing only the beach-ball-of-death. After a minute or two more, the "Force Quit Applications" window starts showing "Mail (not responding)". I have tried running in safe mode, and reinstalling accounts, but that didn't help. Rebuilding a mailbox is impossible because the app freezes before this can complete. It seems to be triggered by two of my internet accounts: my work account using Microsoft Exchange/OutLook and one of my personal accounts (using gmx.net). My gmail and iCloud and old work accounts do not cause Mail to freeze.

The other seemingly very relevant thing is that this did not happen after updating from Ventura 13.1.1 to 13.2 on my Apple Silicon mac with the exact same internet accounts set up! (indeed, my apple silicon MPB is new and was migrated from my intel MBP about 2 weeks ago using 13.1.1).

Just an update on my post above:

At the end of my workday yesterday, I decided to just leave Mail in its frozen state on my work computer (mac-mini with an intel chip) and see if it managed to fix itself ... and somehow (miraculously?) Mail works completely normally again 14 hours later. I have no explanation, just a suspicion that some background installation processes still needed to complete when the computer wasn't actively being used???

Otherwise, DiZoe's suggestion sounds like it has potential, too. Fortunately, I don't have to try it now.

My Mail crashes immediately when opening too. I reloaded the os from on-line, and that lasted about 45 seconds. I can boot to an older system on a 2nd drive, and mail there works fine. I can access my mail using webmail fine. The issue seems to be the mail app itself. This *****.

Same issues happened to me after Ventura 13.2 install. (MacBook Pro M1) I spent 6 hours on the phone with level 1 tech on two different days. The last one finally had me wipe my hard drive and reinstall as "new" with updates. Mail app work for several hours and then repeated the same issue. I have removed mail app many times now and tried all the "fixes". It still doesn't work. I had to install Outlook from Office 365 so I could function until there is a solution for this issue. I hope Apple is working on it now. I will be calling back in the next few days if they don't get this fixed.

Yes, Mail started crashing after I updated to Ventura 13.2. At first it would crash after about 10-15 seconds of use. I read that you should leave it running for a while and that might fix it. It seemed to at first. It didn't crash until about 2 minutes of use. I then read you could delete index files and that might fix it. I did that, and watched it rebuild the index files, and I was hopeful. After that it crashed immediately upon opening. Someone said they thought Cox was the problem and it is my ISP, and to delete and then reinstall the account. I deleted it, and sure enough, it no longer crashed (at least in the 10-15 minutes I had it open, but then, I had emails to touch or actions to do. Then I reinstalled my Cox account (which ended up taking an hour because of a password problem at Cox) and now it is back to crashing after I touch anything. I've got the client open and am just leaving it there to see what will happen next. This is the craziest problem I've ever had since switching to the Mac.