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Why is mail running so slow

Have the latest IMAC, running Mountain Lion, did migration from an almost identical mac, 2-years older, the mail program and filling out form boxes on web pages is a friggin nightmare, is aplle working on a solution? I see al ot of similar complaints.

Mac Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Aug 17, 2012 12:41 PM

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46 replies

Mar 10, 2013 7:09 PM in response to ccops

This is at least the 6th time I've posted on these forums for this same problem. It seems every "expert" has a different diagnosis and a different solution. Here's the problem.


1. I upgraded to Mountain Lion about a year ago.


2. Ever since then, on occasion, Mail slows down to a crawl (or slower).


3. I log on to these forums and find some "solution" or other. Some work, some don't, and some I don't remotely begin to understand (I'm a user, not a tech nerd - I've never used Terminal since my first Mac in 1989).


4. A period of about three months has passed since my last major problem. I've deleted all old (older than today's date) copies of mail.plist. That had worked sort of in the past, but Mail doesn't seem to be creating new copies of this file anymore like it was for a long time after my ML upgrade. Mail is now so slow that switching from one message to another takes upwards of a minute. My fan is making audible noise that it never has before.


5. There is only one copy of mail.plist (that I can find) in my system.


6. I have rebuilt my in-box - zero results.


7. I'm getting REALLY tired of this crap. This is Apple circa 1994, not Apple circa 2013.


8. Does anyone have a REAL FIX for this idiotic problem that doesn't require a computer science master's degree?

I'm dyin' here...

May 5, 2013 8:05 PM in response to Zoomduster

got this solution from fixkb.com (and it worked for me)..when the "terminal page comes up just click in the box and paste the command (below)..mail is working fine for me now. The last time I used a tip from here, but this time it did not work..so I searched more and found this 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.

Why is mail running so slow

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