Apple Mail keeps crashing after installing Mountain Lion.

I've posted another thread about Mail crashing on Mountain Lion. For me it crashes as soon as I start it. It started happening a couple of days after installing Mountain Lion. It didn't crash initially. None of the suggestions have worked (fix permissions etc.). I get a console message about addressbook being a directory and then it crashes.

It is somewhat comforting to know that I am not the only one having this problem, but I'd feel a lot better when Apple fixes this issue.

I've talked to Apple 3 times now, for more than 3 hours. Nothing has wroked. Mail consistantly crashes within 60 seconds of launching. Even under new user accounts. I can duplicate the error on three different machines. It is a larger problem than file premissions. The last tech just called me and said they are having FLOODS of reports of mail crashing and are working on an update.

This did not help my situation on any of my 3 macs. All 3 mail crashes within 60 seconds. Even with a single email account.

I'm having the same problem. All of a sudden how two days into Mountain Lion, Mail.app has just stopped working completely. I tried all of the above without success and even tried restoring from CrashPlan from yesterday when mail was working normally. This is on a mid 2011 iMac 3.4 i7 with 32 GB RAM. Mail initially worked fine and then had spinning wheel of death and it never opened normally again.

I suppose I should be happy it works normally on my MBP after reading this thread...

Posted full report on details in a separate thread:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4157793?answerId=19095886022#19095886022

I should add that I tried safe mode, repairing boot volume, permissions, etc... none of those attempts at a a fix were successful...

I've tried all of these solutions without any luck. I couldn't even easily simply reinstall Mountain Lion. I had to use gParted to completely erase my hard drive and then install Mountain lion via USB. Fortunately, I have backups, but this is still unbelievable and I don't know how a novice user would handle this (I live about 10 hours from the nearest Apple Store).

Hey Dusty, I have the same problem. I just bought a brandnew Retina Display Mac Book Pro. I upgraded it to Mountain Lion and Mail keeps crashing on Exchange. I was looking forward to using Mac Mail instead of Outlook. But was dissapointed with the crash.

I have opened a case with Apple Support, and they are supposed to revert back to me later this week. I'll post something if I find a solution.

But today, the same thing started to happen on Lion also. There was an upgrade on Lion, and after the upgrade, it casues Mail to crash. So I am stuck on both Lion and Mountian Lion.

Like I said earlier, its a larger bug. This has now spread to ALL of my office Macs, laptops, NONE of my employees can use Mail.app without it crashing every 30 seconds. Thankfull we use Google Apps and everyone is able to use gmail for our email but I am Very DISAPPOINTED now. Don't get me wrong, I will choose Mac over PC anyday but for Apple to have this happening so wide across their user base and NO big fix after more than a week, disappointing.

Agreed, even after a completely new installation and manually recreating all of my accounts, Mail.app is crashing (I have a mix of several IMAP accounts, gmail and Exchange). I look forward to an update which will resolve these issues!

Okay I solved the problem on Lion. Here is what you need to do:

Step 1: Start Mail while simultanesouly pressing the shift key

Step 2: When mail opens, double clik on the line that divides the message list and the message preview.

Step 3: Wait a couple of minutes and close mail.

Step 4: Start mail normally

This should clear up mail crashing on exchange on Lion. The problem with Mountain Lion still exists and that is a bigger issue that Apple needs to resolve. You would have thought, that they would put together a compelling, trouble free mail app to compete with Outlook. If they did that, they would get a lot of Outlook users moving over to MACs.

That didn't work for me. Step 1: start Mail while pressing the Shift key -- crashes right away.

I don't have an exchange account linked to Mail though. Just gmail.

MobileMe just went away a couple of days ago -- co-incident with the Mail crash. I had stopped using the me.com account a while back, but I am wondering if some residual configuration that I didn't clean up is causing this crash.

Is there a way to remove accounts settings without using Mail? (since, for me, it crashes immediately).

Deleting accounts won't help. I deleted all my accounts and preferences, and it still crashed!

G'day

My mail.app on Mountain Lion crashes every time, can't get into it at all.

This started on the morning of the 3rd of August Australian EST.

Interestingly, I have an old Macbook Pro running Snow Leapard and can't get mail.app working to iCloud on it either, but it does not crash.

Apple, we need help this is your problem to solve.

I've tried all the suggested "fixes" and haven't been able to fix my mail. My problem started as soon as I started mail in Mountain Lion. Two of my accounts are not recognized and I'm told it is a server problem but I checked with my servers and all is fine as far as they are concerned.

My MacBook Pro mail on Lion still works on most of the accounts except the two that don't work at all on my iMac, they ask for a password and when I put it in it works at least.

Mountain Lion mail on my iMac asks for the password it just says it can't connect to the server and won't work at all no matter what I do.

I've given up and have to get my mail from the web service which is a real pain but at least I can access my mail in a round about way. I'm considering giving up on Mountain Lion but I have no idea how to uninstall it and reinstal Lion. If Lion mail is starting to have problems I don't really see the point. How did we get so reliant on email????

Hey everybody,

I have slightly different problem, but anyway Apple Mail started to crush after upgrade to OS X Mountain Lion. Mail started to work correctly after upgrade to Mountain Lion, then offered to update the database of messages I have, says it will take couple of minutes and then crushes, even without showing any crush report.