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Q: 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

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Q: Mail under Mountain Lion is painfully slow / unusable

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  • by deanofhallow,

    deanofhallow deanofhallow Sep 16, 2013 11:48 PM in response to sdpate
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 16, 2013 11:48 PM in response to sdpate

    This previouse posting works for me.... though i have to do it every few months

    Problem

    Apple Mail is very slow in it’s response. Message lists take ages to update and the app itself seems to pause for 15-20 seconds.

    Cause

    The SQL database that Mail uses to catalog your email addresses needs a bit of housekeeping now and again, you really need to have a tidy up!

    Solution

    First quit Mail – then:

    For OSX Lion (10.7) and Mountain Lion (10.8) you need to do the following:

    1. Open the Terminal App – You can find this by using spotlight and typing terminal.
    2. Copy and paste this command into the command line of Terminal:
      sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope\ Index vacuum;

      For Snow Leopard (10.6) you need to do the following: 

    1. Open the Terminal App – You can find this by using spotlight and typing terminal.
    2. Copy and paste this command into the command line of Terminal:
      /usr/bin/sqlite3 ~/Library/Mail/Envelope\ Index vacuum;

    You should now find that Mail runs much faster.

  • by KathiMR,

    KathiMR KathiMR Sep 17, 2013 12:42 AM in response to petermac87
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 17, 2013 12:42 AM in response to petermac87

    I guess I didn't reply that I did get rid of MacKeeper. & then some time in there I accidentally spilled water on my MacBookPro & ended up getting a new one. But the Apple Store people helped me get rid of it.

     

    Also, as someone else posted, I think my problem was way too many emails. I tend to keep  my emails & so they accumulate. As the other person said, was not a problem w Snow Leopard but assuming its the old issue of newer software adds more bells & whistles & thus uses more memory.

     

    I agressively was deleting emails--thousands of them.

     

    I can't remember how much of that was before I got my new MacBookPro or after. But mail does seem to be working fine now. & when I got this new one, they used my Time Machine backup to restore all my stuff onto the new Mac--even Parallels & Windows 7 & Outlook (although later I had Windows telling me it wasn't valid software & was going in circles on that w the people at Microsoft that I needed to talk to gone for the weekend. But then all of a sudden it was solved & I don't even know how.

     

    So the new one should have had the same stuff as was on the old one.

     

    & just checked the count & it looks like I have over 72k emails on my Mac--many of them very old & not really used unless I want to look up something from years ago. But inbox has 27k+ so maybe the other very old ones are in a place that is not being used & so not slowing it down--not sure just how that all works.

     

    It shows I'm running 10.8.4 now. & its all working fine.

  • by KathiMR,

    KathiMR KathiMR Sep 17, 2013 1:05 AM in response to KathiMR
    Level 1 (19 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 17, 2013 1:05 AM in response to KathiMR

    An additional factor is that I moved in May from S CA w cox very slow speed internet (I had the economy kind that they didn't even offer any more).  Now in Portland, OR w Comcast & Speedtest just showed download 33.7 mbps & upload 5.87. & this is using wifi from right next to my telephony modem & wifi router.

     

    I also suspect that w 4 Gb memory & using a lot of different programs open at the same time I may have been using most of the available memory which of course would slow things down.

  • by Cris from London,

    Cris from London Cris from London Sep 18, 2013 9:58 AM in response to sdpate
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Sep 18, 2013 9:58 AM in response to sdpate

    worked very well, thank you!

  • by cogito2,

    cogito2 cogito2 Sep 18, 2013 1:46 PM in response to George Katele
    Level 1 (39 points)
    Sep 18, 2013 1:46 PM in response to George Katele

    A similar issue, though perhaps it should have its own thread.  Installers generally look for all discs you might want to install the software on.  They find your regular HD, and then spend the next couple of minutes hunting for other discs, when it should only take a moment to discover that there aren't any others.  It's a pity there's no way to stop the search so it can go ahead installing on the disc that it has found!

  • by Lawrie50,

    Lawrie50 Lawrie50 Oct 20, 2013 5:35 AM in response to deanofhallow
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 20, 2013 5:35 AM in response to deanofhallow

    Excellent, this is the answer to the problem with iCloud mail. Thanks I'm cured

  • by Agentfruit,

    Agentfruit Agentfruit Nov 20, 2013 7:59 AM in response to Nigelfromca
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Nov 20, 2013 7:59 AM in response to Nigelfromca

    Thank you dsjr!  I'd tried the well documented terminal fix without success, but this contacts removal worked a treat. I'd noticed that my contacts had slowly but surely been creating subtle duplicates within the address fields over the past couple of months....goodness knows how as it wasn't the normal duplication of entries that we all had when icloud first came into existence.  Removing the 'earthbound' address book completely and starting again has resolved it as the icloud version was still intact. 

     

    The last step that I haven't figured out is how to get the contacts back onto my Mac - at the moment the Contacts are only showing from iCloud not On My Mac.  Anyone?  I've tried switching on and off iCloud, and selecting merge contacts, but to no avail. 

     

    AF.

  • by Ruskat,

    Ruskat Ruskat Jul 16, 2014 8:49 PM in response to dooksguzman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jul 16, 2014 8:49 PM in response to dooksguzman

    This worked for me

     

    > sys pref

    >network

    >Advanced

    > DNS

    check DNS numbers are correct, mine was showing the router and greyed out so I added my IP specific numbers

    >Restart (not sure if you need this step but I did it)

    Page loading improved significantly from very slow to acceptable on some to blistering fast in others

    AND emails just flew in/out really quickly

     

    Also make sure you have the right ports for your IP because I had been given an alternate one to try and that upset the incoming messages

     

    >Mail

    >preferences

    > advanced

    > port (you can find this by searching your the help section on your IP website)

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