deleting email that keeps crashing my Mac mail program

Do a backup.

Quit the application.

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. Select Library. Then go to Preferences/Mail/V2. Locate the inbox of the affected account and then delete the emails there. There are a lot of folders you have to look through.

Thanks to leonie for some information contained in this.

I'm a little confused. If you moved the V2 folder to the Trash, why is it still showing in Mail? Did you trash the e-mail?

Thanks for the thread. Unfortunately, I am having the same problem. My "in-box" however, is not in my Mailboxes folder. My Junk and Outbox is listed, but not my In-box (or me Sent box, but I don't need that).

Any additional advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

Try re-indexing the mailboxes. This can take awhile if you have a lot of mail.

Reindex messages

Thanks, Eric. I do indeed have many many emails and folders, so I do not want to attempt this --- my entire work life is within these folders.

I'm wondering this:

I've moved all the emails out of my In-box except the two that are causing the problems and the ones and either side (since moving those would crash Mail because the cursor would then move to the offending emails.).

So, what would happen if I now delete my entire In-box? could I them reinstate the In-box easily and move the "good" emails back in?

Thanks so much!

I would try creating an On My Mac mailbox and see if you can copy the corrupt emails there. If so, then delete that mailbox.

Hi Eric.

I clicked "this helped me", but it did not. What I wanted to say is, as I've been pleadingly explaining all along, is that I can't move the emails, can't click on them, can't do anything with them except have them sit in my In-box with other emails around them to "protect" me from accidently running my cursor over them (which of course happens anyway).

Thanks anyway

I am having the same issue. dlepofsk, did you find a solution?

I've no idea if the OP has resolved his problem, as it's a month since his last post.

As all his attempts to resolve the issue have failed, he or anyone else with this type of problem could try this solution. I've previously used it in both Mail and Entourage.

The rogue emails need to be deleted one by one. Note the date and time of the first rogue email. Change your system clock to the date of the rogue email. and to the time just before it was received. Send yourself an email. Then change your system clock to the time just after the rogue email was received and send yourself another email. You should then have the emails you sent on either side of the rogue email. Click your email above the rogue one, then shift click the one below it. You should then see all 3 emails highlighted, including the rogue email, and you haven't clicked on it. Then delete all 3. Repeat for any other rogue emails that causes your email client to crash. I have successfully done this in the past, hope it works for you.

I had this same problem and spent too much time trying to rebuild and fix my email... and thought to try something different. I made a rule to remove the email and move it to the trash (actually I had two from one vendor which had the start of the same subject line) and was able to run the rule and move the emails to my trash. Then I erased my trash. Worked.

This worked for me! Thank you so much!

Thanks SailCelestine for a quick, easy & clever solution!

I was having this same problem, and trying to sandwich the bad email between good emails (as suggested above) also crashed Mail, so I'm posting this quick fix for anyone who can't use the above trick (less work, too).

http://www.macworld.com/article/1162877/mail_crashes.html

My Mail window is configured a bit differently than in that example, with folders to the left and a split pane with subject lines above and a preview pane below. In my case, Mail wasn't automatically selecting the offending email, so all I had to do was open Mail and drag the horizontal bar between message list and previews down to the bottom, closing the preview window. With no preview activating the bad script, I could select the baddy and delete it. The instructions linked give a workaround for you if the bad email is being selected by default when you open Mail as well.

Good luck!

Nikol