Q: shutdown on mavericks VERY SLOW with mail.app!

It's the Mail app. Switch to some other Email program and never open Mail app again.

OS X: How to quit an unresponsive application using Force Quit

Please follow these directions to delete the Mail "sandbox" folder.

Back up all data.

Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail

Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select

Services ▹ Reveal

from the contextual menu.* A Finder window should open with a folder named "com.apple.mail" selected. If it does, move the selected folder — not just its contents — to the Desktop. Leave the Finder window open for now.

Log out and log back in. Launch Mail and test. If the problem is resolved, you may have to recreate some of your Mail settings. You can then delete the folder you moved and close the Finder window. If you still have the problem, quit Mail again and put the folder back where it was, overwriting the one that may have been created in its place. Post your results.

Caution: If you change any of the contents of the sandbox, but leave the folder itself in place, Mail may crash or not launch at all. Deleting the whole sandbox will cause it to be rebuilt automatically.

*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combinationcommand-C. In the Finder, select

Go ▹ Go to Folder...

from the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

Which "other" mail app is out there? Mail is just so darned handy!

Thank you Mr. Davis!

Your solution worked a treat and now I'm back to emailing as efficiently as ever.

No loss of data or old emails either.

Thanks so much!

Christian

What backups do you have? If the answer is "none," that's a much more urgent problem than the one in your original question.

Mac Basics: Time Machine backs up your Mac

Follow the instructions on the page linked above to back up your data.

I'm having the same problem here. I tried trashing the sandbox as Linc suggets, whcih did improve things for a while but is not a permanent fix.

One thing which I found helped (a bit) is changing the way Mail empties the Trash. Check in Mail preferences under 'Mailbox Behaviours'. Are any of your accounts set to delete Junk or Trash messages when 'Quitting Mail'? If so, this may be slowing things down as you try to quit Mail. Try changing them to delete Junk & Trash when "One day old" (or longer if you prefer) and see if this makes a difference. It did for me, although Mail is still slow to quit it doesn't crash altogether.

Another workaround is simply to remember Mail needs to be quit manually a couple of minutes before you shut down or restart your computer. It does quit eventually, it just takes time.

It is a shame; like others here I like the Mail interface. I have looked at other mail clients but they all seem to lack that user-friendly Apple 'look'.

One solution that I've found out the hard way was NOT to set up iCloud or Mail or any network (wifi/ethernet) related stuff when you do a clean install and set up during first boot. Do all the updates and bring your computer up to speed (let spotlight finish its job & other initial processes). When everything is done set up iCloud, Mail, findmymac and etc. This has to go through an clean install which for most is not an option. This won't work with your current install and even if you do a network install/reinstall via mac recovery. This was the only thing worked for me after trying out all hacks I found online.