Mail refuses to load after Lion.

I also have the hung Mail after an upgrade to Lion. Force quit needed, no windows visible, lots of ??? -??? in Sample Process Activity Report. I'll try the various cures outlined in this thread but I also wonder if it's related to the ongoing permissions error in 10.7 where user account created in Tiger or earlier , then upgraded, have "fetching..." instead of Staff in the get Info pane for nearly any file. this has also broken iPhoto, keynote and my corporate ethernet connectivity as the Cisco switch insists I'm using a en0 MAC address of 00:00:04:00:00 and promptly dumps my iMac as an network intruder.

I cloned my Snow Leopard iMac disc to a new MBP 15" which also came with SL, the upgrade on the MBP was flawless and Mail does work there! Having Mail hang on my desktop and the other 20 or more problems does suggest that a few people with mission critical systems should have a diversity hardware backup too or wait for 10.7.1/2 before playing with this big cat

iMac7,1 4G RAM 250GB HDD (stuffed) ; MBP8,2 15" 2.2GHz quad i7 8GB RAM 750GB HDD (OK!)

I have wrestled with same issue but since I upgraded on vacation I used I phone for most mail. (Note to self do not upgrade while on vacation!!) I tried brute force method so many time I thought that I must be on camera- watch what silly humains do! Did not work-here is what I did.

I went to system pref found mail calendars and looked at list- I 1st had to approve some keychains I then have many emails from presonal to school to work to kids I started off with mine and viola it is cleaning up data migration as we speak I have no doubt this did the trick. Thanks for the community and help-this is what I truely love about the Mac and it the people-I do love the Apple store people too when I need them!

This is unbelievably pathetic. It's now Sep. 6, and here I thought I'd done my due dilligence by waiting this long, only to come up to the SAME problem everyone else seems to be having here.

Finally got around the issue by deleting all traces of all accounts in System Preferences (though I'm having some major issues with that unexpectedly quitting as well). Now I've got to reorganize ALL my mailboxes. That's just how I wanted to spend my day.

I guess the waiting period for the next upgrade will be THREE months! 😠

Ok - Had the same issue: Loading gear in the message viewer window:

Very simple solution.

in the menu bar select: Mailbox> Rebuild

you will have to do this individually for each mail box, but all my messages have populated, and it only takes a few moments for each mailbox. Hope this helps!

aroszak wrote:

I spent two hours wrestling this issue yesterday; for me it was related to my Exchange account. If I removed that from my user accounts, Mail and iCal loaded and ran fine (my other accounts are verizon and google).

Today I got a fix and was able to add my exchange account back, and it's working fine with Mail and iCal. Hope this helps some of you...

It seems that the latest Mac OS X Lion (10.7) shipped with a bug in the certificate checking. While we don't have a software fix from Apple at this point, we do have a way to fix the issue.

Here are the steps:

1.In Finder, open your Utilities folder and double-click Keychain Access

2.Once Keychain Access loads, in the menubar, click "Keychain Access" -> "Preferences"

3.In the Preferences window, click "Certificates"

4.Change the dropdown for "Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP):" to "Off"

5.Change the dropdown for "Certificate Revocation List (CRL):" to "Off"

6.Close the Preferences window

7.Quit Keychain Access

8.And you're done!

This solution worked brilliantly. Thank you! In my case, I purchased a new MacBook Pro 2.3 I7 and migrated my old MacBook Pro running SL using Migration Assitant tool via a firewire external drive which contained my cloned SL system. It was then I began having odd certificate problems on the new MacBook Pro with Lion. At first I noticed I could not connect to Gmail POP through Mail 5, which was odd because all my other POP mail accounts were working. So I began to look for problems with Gmail and Mail 5, which led me to incorrect conclusions because that was only the tip of the iceberg. Once I started playing around with Lion more, I noticed oddities such as the inability for Google Chrome to update itself, giving me server errors. Then I could not download the Chrome browser even by visiting the Chrome website. Then I could not access the App Store. Then I could not unpack Apple Software updates using the Software Update menu as it said the download (issued by Apple) could not be trusted! Mind you, this is a brand new MacBook Pro running a factory installed Lion, and I did all the correct things using Migration Assitant from a perfectly working copy of SL on a 2007 MacBook Pro 2.2. Hopefully Apple fixes this, and again aroszak, thank you! I was pulling my hair out before coming across your solution. All is working again.

Also, I was having the same issue with Mail not loading (had to force quit) and ended up rebuilding my mailboxes as another person mentioned. That was the solution to that problem for me. Thanks!

Thank you, Z.aviar! This finally worked for me. All messages loaded... and, away I go. You are a lifesaver!!

When I was opening mail, I would get a "UPGRADE MAIL", I would click continue and and it would freeze. Would try to quit mail and that did absoulutely nothing. I would have to go into system preferences and do a force quit. Tried this many times and nothing.

I went into "SYTEM PREFERENCES", clicked on the "MAIL, CONTACTS AND CALENDARS". I then "DELETED" all 3 accounts(not icloud though).

Then I "RESTARTED" my computer. After I restarted, I click on the mail icon and it loaded fine the first time.

All 3 accounts are back in the system preferences and my files and folder structure is all there.

This is what worked for me, good luck!!!

Been trying all the different "solutions" offered here. None worked. Finally called Apple. After standard questions about memory, and suggestions like ditching mail preferences, the tech suggested I try rebooting in Safe Mode (hold down shift key on re-start until you see progress bar below spinning wheel). Worked.

I spent two hours wrestling this issue yesterday; for me it was related to my Exchange account. If I removed that from my user accounts, Mail and iCal loaded and ran fine (my other accounts are verizon and google).

Today I got a fix and was able to add my exchange account back, and it's working fine with Mail and iCal. Hope this helps some of you...

It seems that the latest Mac OS X Lion (10.7) shipped with a bug in the certificate checking. While we don't have a software fix from Apple at this point, we do have a way to fix the issue.

Here are the steps:

1.In Finder, open your Utilities folder and double-click Keychain Access

2.Once Keychain Access loads, in the menubar, click "Keychain Access" -> "Preferences"

3.In the Preferences window, click "Certificates"

4.Change the dropdown for "Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP):" to "Off"

5.Change the dropdown for "Certificate Revocation List (CRL):" to "Off"

6.Close the Preferences window

7.Quit Keychain Access

8.And you're done!

That worked perfectly! Thanks a lot!!!

=)

This worked like a charm for me; updated the old database in about 30 seconds. Thanks! I've been pulling my hair out (what's left of it) for a couple of days trying to get this working.

Booting into Safe Mode worked for me as well, thank you!

My problem was that I was left hanging at the point where the upgrade window said "migrating data" - the bar would fill up to a solid blue color and it appeared as though nothing was happening anymore. I tried every possible solution on this thread just short of the suggestion to delete or move my /Library/Mail folder. I wanted to avoid having to set up all my email addresses again (I have about 10). Well after trying everything else, I finally decided that there was no other option.

I moved my mail folder to my desktop to see what would happen and turns out Mail opened just fine. So I proceeded to re-add all of my accounts. Shortly afterwards I realized that my Mail folder was 150GB!!!

Basically my conclusion is that eventhough the progress bar was full and motionless, I believe that it was still migrating the data, but likely would have taken weeks.

So anyone with a stalled progress bar, I highly urge you to check the size of your Mail folder.

Oh and I will add, for the past two years I have always wondered what was eating up all my hard drive space. Ha, now I know. 150GB is ridiculous, I do hope this was addressed in this new version of mail.

Hope this helps someone. 🙂

I went to Library > Mail> and removed the envelope Index files...placed it in the trash > and finally entered new settings and tada the Mail window opened and I could download my mails .

I just ran Mail.app (5.2) for the first time on Lion (10.7.4).

All went well, except "Identifying message conversations" took 7.5 hours (5.5 hours CPU) instead of "a few minutes".

The progress bar looked stalled, but moved about 1 letter every half hour.

For example, from under the letter "t" in "take" to under the letter "a".

Envelope Index grew to around 40MB. I think my mailbox was around 200MB