Mail stuck in outbox. Mac locks up

I know there is a known issue with mail and there are numerous threads on the mail memory leak. I am amazed a core app like mail has been neglected by apple for so long but anyway. I have a mail stuck in the outbox and cannot get rid of it due to the memory leak. Within a few seconds of launching mail the app hogs 10gig of ram and counting which doesn't give me change to get to the offending message. I cannot rebuild mailboxes either. I have been told it might be a gmail issue but I cannot do a thing once I click the dreaded mail icon. Any pointers would be appreciated

Mac mini, Mac OS X (10.7.1), null

Posted on Feb 20, 2015 8:57 AM

Reply
7 replies

Feb 20, 2015 2:43 PM in response to thx67

Back up all data before proceeding.

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

~/Library/Mail/Bundles

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

Services Open

from the contextual menu.* A folder may open, or you may get an error message that the item can't be found. Either result is normal. If the folder does open and has contents, move the contents to the Desktop. Relaunch Mail and test. If there's no change, put the contents of the folder back and quit Mail again.

2. Repeat with this line:

/Library/Mail/Bundles

This time you may be prompted for your administrator login password when you remove the items. Make sure they're removed from the folder and not just copied to the Desktop. If necessary, copy them first and then move the originals to the Trash.

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

Go Go to Folder...

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

Feb 21, 2015 8:04 AM in response to Linc Davis

Thanks for the info. Do I need mail running before these commands? I guess not and the instructions didn't seem to do anything. The final part using go... etc just sounded an error with "the folder could not be found" With the first and second commands nothing happens at all, no error messages and no prompts to enter my admin password. Any other suggestions? Thanks once again for taking the time to respond.

Feb 21, 2015 10:39 AM in response to thx67

Do a backup.


Quit Mail.


Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Go to Library/Containers/com.apple.mail. Move the folder com.apple.mail to your desktop. You must move the entire folder, not just the contents.


Restart, re-launch Mail and test. If the problem is solved, recreate any required Mail settings and import any emails you want to save from the folder on the desktop.


You can then put the folder in the Trash. If the problem remains, return the folder to where you got it replacing the one that is there.


Information learned from Linc Davis. Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

Feb 21, 2015 11:03 AM in response to thx67

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad and start typing the name.

The title of the Console window should be All Messages. If it isn't, select

SYSTEM LOG QUERIES ▹ All Messages

from the log list on the left. If you don't see that list, select

View ▹ Show Log List

from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Then launch Mail and wait for it to do whatever it's doing. Select any lines that appear in the Console window. Copy them to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. Paste into a reply to this message by pressing command-V.

The log contains a vast amount of information, almost all of which is irrelevant to solving any particular problem. When posting a log extract, be selective. A few dozen lines are almost always more than enough.

Please don't indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.

Please don't post screenshots of log messages—post the text.

Some private information, such as your name or email address, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

Feb 22, 2015 6:47 AM in response to thx67

Thanks to all who have posted on here. I tried to respond directly to a couple of you but for some reason I couldn't do it.😕


Linc. I did as advised but I didn't post back as I haven't a clue what is relevant and didn't want to post 1000s of lines on useless info.


SO. Heres what I think I've discovered. In short Mail drop DOES NOT WORK. What seemed to be happening was the email stuck in the outbox and causing the memory leak was a large file. I couldn't get to it in time to delete it as the memory flipped out before I could get to it. I had the activity monitor on standby in case I ran into problems. Force quit from the menu bar didn't seem to work as well. Once mail launched, I had to rush into the mail preferences and take all accounts offline. It can be done but you've got to be quick. I also did the same method and un checked "save draft on server" in the preferences mailbox behaviors. Did a restart, took accounts back online and its working. Being stupid, I tortured myself and tried to see if indeed it WAS mail drop that was causing the problem and tried to send a large file. Guess what. It freaked out again so I'm guessing thats where the problem lies. It may be that the file was on an external drive which caused the problem but I'm not going to bother using apple mail anymore. Ive tried to stick with apple apps but they are slowly becoming a chore to use which was the initial attraction of Apple products but thats another story for another day.


Thanks once again to everyone who helped out with their pointers. In particular Eric Root and Linc Davis with the heavy stuff!

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Mail stuck in outbox. Mac locks up

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