Mountain Lion: can't open Mail, Contacts & Calendars preference pane

Well after about 45 minutes with Apple Tech Support, I was able to (re)establish access to the "Mail, Contacts, & Calendars" screen in System Preferences.

Neither the tech specialist nor myself are quite sure how we accomplished it, and I will try to retrace our steps here for those of you *still* experiencing the problem.

FYI this is a "user" problem, not a system problem; that is to say, if you create a new user (in System Preferences) with admin status, you should be able to access this setting under that (new) user account. Thus, we established that there is something funky going on under the user settings.

That being said, see if this works for you:

1. Go to your Library folder (Open Finder, then click "Go"; hold down 'option' key, and your Library should open)

2. In the Library folder, find your "preferences folder" and copy it to your desktop (click on a file, hit cmd-a, then copy, and paste to desktop)

3. Delete (move to trash) everything in your Library ---> "preferences" folder EXCEPT the following file:

com.apple.mail.plist.lockfile

4. Restart

5. Move everything back from the "preferences" folder on your desktop BACK to the Library ---> Preferences folder (remember: to access your Library folder, go to Finder, click on "Go" and hold down "option" key, and it will appear)

6. Restart

7. Open "System Preferences" and click on "Mail, Contacts, and Calendars" and you should be all set

You can now just delete the "preferences" folder from your desktop (only after being sure you've copied everything back to the Library ---> "preferences" folder; you can also empty the trash at this point, assuming all is working).

NOTE: I can't vouch for this working without any problem. If you're the least bit nervous or suspicious about this remedy, call Tech Support and I am sure they will walk you through this. I was on hold for about 1 minute, and although it was tedious to fix the problem, all was resolved in the end.

Thanks for this. This has worked for me.

However, I don't know why, as when you move all the files back from the desktop copy of the 'Preferences' folder, your are reverting to all of the old files - i.e. the files that were there when you had the problem.

If anyone can help me understand this I'd be grateful!

Thanks again.

When I copied all the files back from the desktop to the library and restarted, all those preferences returned. I lost nothing.

Perhaps you haven't restarted.

It also worked for me! Thank you very much for taking the time to document it!

Didn't work for me. Followed the steps twice.

My bad. Tried a third time, giving more time for the system to rebuild a few preference files after the first reboot and finished the process. Now I can confirm the method also works for me.

Thanks a lot, guys.

I am having the same problem and followed your instructions but I am getting the same message/s. I also was getting a jabber security message about sending messages unsecurely but that seemed to stop. After doing the first restart I had to go through the whole process of signing up and into iCloud. Very strange! The one thing I did on my Mac was used an application called "WhatSizeMac" and deleted duplicate files. I do have some files in my Trash that I can't delete nor can I put them back? I have an Genius Bar appointment tomorrow which hopefully will help fix this. But I think it's the app I used:{

Hi all,

I have faced the same problem on the latest system (10.9), and I've tried the way wrote by Robert Wosnitzer, but unfortunatlly it didn't work out for me.

So I tried another way, which is:

I installed the 10.9 system on an external disk, and I relaced the InternetAccounts.prefPane the one on my local disk with the one on my external disk. And it worked.

I hope it could be a useful way for you.

Khalil

🙂

Same problem with Mavericks, everything working fine now, thanks Robert!!

Khalil wrote:

I installed the 10.9 system on an external disk [Remark: or just another Mac], and I [copied] the "InternetAccounts.prefPane" from "/System/Library/PreferencePanes/" to the same folder one on my local disk. And it worked.

Thanks you for this - much simpler and less problematic - solution apporach. This worked perfectly for me!

I just copied the Preference Pane "InternetAccounts.prefPane" from another Mac where I had installed Mavericks as well. I noticed that the modification date of the mentioned PrefPane files was also much more accurate than on the secondary, newly installed system.

My problem is quite different from all of above, I have one Time Capsule and use it to backup my OS, two days ago it broke down cuz of sudden power off, so Time Machine function turned disable automatically.

Yesterday I found I couldn't open several setting panes in the System Preferences, such as iCould, Internet Accounts, Network, Sharing, etc.

Then I tried the other way to access to the Internet Accounts via Mail > Accounts, then I found I could make it through this way and it opened the origenal System Preferences with the right icon of it, the System Preferences panel I opened from the left top corner Apple icon was with the incorrected icon which I noticed on the Dock.

So I use Right Click on the two System Preferences panels on the Dock to show them in Finder, then I found it pointed to two different locations, the incorrected one points to the Time Machine backup folder.

Solution: I deleted the Time Machine backup folder then reboot the puter, then Mavericks replace the incorrect System Preferences with the correct one.

Hope my article could help guys with Time Capsule.