conquestjohn

Q: deleting email that keeps crashing my Mac mail program

On my Macbook Pro OS X 10.9.5 running Mail Version 7.3 (1878.6) I have an email that keeps crashing my Mac Mail program. I tried avoiding this email but every once in a while after deleting other e-mails this one in particular would be highlighted and would crash my mail program. There are a number of emails from the same address that cause the same issue. I sorted the emails by "from" trying to delete all the e-mails that cause the problem and as long as the e-mails that gave me trouble were highlighted I still have the same problem. Even when I highlight these e-mails along with others my Mail program crashes.

 

I went to the forums to find a solution as there was no way I could delete these e-mails. One of the ideas was to delete the com.apple.mail folder in the library folder. This I did. When I reopened the Mail application all of my mailboxes were missing. So after fixing that error I am back to trying to get rid of just the emails that crash Mail.

 

Help would be very much appreciated.I went to the trash and retrieved the .com folder and put it back where it once was. However, the mailboxes did not reappear.

Macbook Pro

Posted on May 29, 2015 11:44 AM

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Q: deleting email that keeps crashing my Mac mail program

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  • by nikolfromharveyville,

    nikolfromharveyville nikolfromharveyville Feb 2, 2016 8:12 PM in response to conquestjohn
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 2, 2016 8:12 PM in response to conquestjohn

    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

  • by TripleToe,

    TripleToe TripleToe Apr 13, 2016 7:44 AM in response to nikolfromharveyville
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Mac OS X
    Apr 13, 2016 7:44 AM in response to nikolfromharveyville

    I've determined (at least in my case) that the culprit is spam messages in the folder that have crazy characters that render as squares in the subject line. For me, they are usually spam email messages in my junk folder from my gmail account.  I can either login directly to gmail (via a web browser) and delete them there, or I can close the Mac mail message viewer window and then highlight and delete the email messages since it only crashes when Mail tries to display them (either individually or in the stack of multiple selected messages) in the viewer.

  • by PainterGal,

    PainterGal PainterGal May 26, 2016 9:29 AM in response to SailCelestine
    Level 1 (4 points)
    May 26, 2016 9:29 AM in response to SailCelestine

    Thank you! That worked great!

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