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Mail under Mountain Lion is painfully slow / unusable

I started this on a separate list. Someone suggested posting to the ML group so here goes. Take a look at:


https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4142266


To summarize again:


The upgrade to Mountain Lion went smoothly but Mail works really badly afterwards.


  • When sending an email, it takes a few minutes before the mail goes out. And that's with any size message.
  • Auto-completion of mail addresses while composing takes multiple minutes. Even after it finally comes up with a list of email addresses, pressing enter on one also takes minutes to acknowledge
  • At various times, hitting the mail icon on the dock has no effect. The same is true with Command+TAB


Overall, the unresponsiveness is painful and making me wish I hadn't upgraded


I use Mail for work as well as home. It's now making my work day completely useless as composing and sending a single email now takes about 5 minutes (regardless of the size of the email).

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Jul 27, 2012 8:47 AM

Reply
157 replies

Oct 12, 2012 9:48 PM in response to rkcorp

Hi folks,


maybe not entirely what you are talking about, and I do not mean to hi-jack this nice thread, but it is a MAIL related question / problem, so here goes.


(I started my own thread on this, but only 2 people and a bag of beans visited it, and nobody bothered to reply).


When I move a message in my Yahoo inbox, say from Inbox to one of my custom made folders, MAIL just will not synchronize.

It stays in the inbox........even the "get new mail" button doesn´t work.


When I stop MAIL, and reopen the program.......it DOES sync, no problem.

Everything moves to the correct folder


I know there`s an option "Synch with Yahoo" in the menu above, but that does sweet bugger all, unfortunately.


Is there a way to Sync or am I destined to stop the program and restart it everytime??


Your feedback would be greatly appreciated!


MXP 150 Patriot


P.S: Anyone else noticed the custom made folders empty themselves at time, where you have to download all the mails again?

Nov 14, 2012 7:07 AM in response to sdpate

I had the same slow lookup issues and tried most of the suggestion in this thread without success. I then took a look at /var/log/system.log and noticed the following message:


Nov 14 22:56:14 bigfella Mail[762]: Error creating source folder ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook: Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=4 "The file “AddressBook” doesn’t exist." UserInfo=0x7facc40c5e30 {NSFilePath=/Users/alvin/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Applica tion Support/AddressBook, NSUnderlyingError=0x7facc409efb0 "The operation couldn’t be completed. No such file or directory"}


I then went into ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Application Support and noticed that AddressBook was linking to some garbage.


$ ls -l

total 48

lrwxr-xr-x 1 alvin staff 46 Aug 16 23:25 AddressBook -> pp??m?4??@??q???????;???????=x??K1????`??mGGz?

drwx------ 3 alvin staff 102 Aug 21 09:07 CrashReporter

drwx------ 2 alvin staff 68 Aug 16 23:25 Mail

lrwxr-xr-x 1 alvin staff 47 Aug 16 23:25 SyncServices -> ../../../../../Application Support/SyncServices

lrwxr-xr-x 1 alvin staff 41 Aug 16 23:25 iCloud -> ../../../../../Application Support/iCloud


I renamed AddressBook to Old_AddressBook and relinked AddressBook:


$ mv AddressBook OLD_AddressBook

$ ln -s ../../../../../Application\ Support/AddressBook


I then restarted Mail and now lookups are instantaneous again. Hope this helps some of you.


Alvin

Nov 14, 2012 7:57 AM in response to barrylazow

The "$" is the command prompt so you do not type it. Open the Terminal utility and do the following:


1. Go to the folder specified


cd ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Application Support


2. List the files in the folder


ls -l


3. If you see a line like the following then you have a similar issue to mine.


lrwxr-xr-x 1 alvin staff 46 Aug 16 23:25 AddressBook -> pp??m?4??@??q???????;???????=x??K1????`??mGGz?

4. To rename the AddressBook link


mv AddressBook OLD_AddressBook


5. To relink AddressBook correctly


ln -s ../../../../../Application\ Support/AddressBook


Alternatively you can try the following:


1. Open a Finder window to your home folder


2. Command-Shift-G and type "Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Application Support"


3. The AddressBook icon should show up as a folder shortcut. If it appears as a file shortcut then you have the same problem as me.


4. To fix just rename AddressBook to OLD_AddressBook


5. Now open a new Finder window and navigate to "Library/Application Support"


6. Hold down Command-Option and drag the AddressBook folder to the first window. This will create an AddressBook folder shortcut in Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Application Support.


Hope this helps.


Alvin

Nov 14, 2012 8:20 AM in response to sdpate

I tried what youn suggested (the second method) and then tried to address a message. It wouldn't even link to an address book at all (no data) so I deleted the "moved" address book and went back and renamed the "old_addressbook" to "addressbook" and it seems to link again but I still have the slow rainbow spinning problem...




These are the files under Address book


ABAssistantChangelog.aclcddb

Migration 20120406061143-23534.abbu.tbz

Migration 20111113091409-5477.abbu.tbz

Sources

AddressBook-v22.abcddb

Configuration.plist

Images

MailRecents-v4.abcdmr

Metadata


Sources, images and Metadata are folders with files in them


I'm thinking of going into an Apple store and trying one of their so callled geniuses. I've had varying success with it

Mail under Mountain Lion is painfully slow / unusable

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