Stock mail app crashes every time it is opened

Try and remove the email accounts the add them back in settings.

I've been having the same problem for months. iPad 2 with iOS 8.3. The problem seems to be that the Mail app gags if there are too many messages. Go to Settings/General/Usage and look for the Storage block. Tap Manage Storage and you'll get a list of the storage used by, well, every app on your device. Mail will probably be near the top. When I looked at this earlier today the Mail app was taking 5.1 gb. I could not launch mail. And I could not send e-mail directly from Tweetbot. Here's what I did.

First, get a record of all the settings and passwords for your e-mail accounts. Make sure these are correct. Next, log on to your busiest accounts through webmail. Delete most of the messages on the server. (My ISP has an entertaining option called "Bypass Trash" that just deletes the messages immediately.) Remember, the Mail app is kind of stupid. It will try to download every message on the server. Hence, reduce that number.

Now comes the fun part. Go back to your iPad and select Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Pick one of those busy accounts and tap it. You're going to tap Delete Account, but first take a few screen captures (Home-Power) of the account settings. (Most accounts have multiple screens for setup. Don't be shy about the number of screen caps. You can delete them when you're done.)

Got the settings? Good. Take a deep breath and tap Delete Account. You'll have to confirm that in the dialog box that opens.

Do this for all of your busy accounts.

The problem seems to be that the only way to reduce the amount of storage Mail uses is to actually delete the account, thereby deleting the messages. My Mail usage is now a much more manageable 2.9 gb. (I have quite a few e-mail accounts some of which are very busy.)

As far as I'm concerned this is a bug in Mail. Other e-mail clients I use include options for compacting the mail database. Still waiting for Apple to catch up.

Hope this helps,

Tony Lima

in Apple's general neighborhood

After deleting the mail account in question, have you tried restoring the iPad as new, without adding any additional content on it? At that time, attempt to open the mail app and see if it works. I have my Exchange account on my iPad mini and it is crammed full of mail, and I've not experienced any issues with the native Mail app at all. It works flawlessly. If you get the mail app to work then, go ahead and restore your backup. If the mail app errors at that time, then you have something corrupt in your backup.

OK, let's try to sort this out. I have an iPad 2 3G with 57.4 gb storage, 11.1 gb free. Running iOS 8.3 with 168 apps,m 1,172 songs, 8 videos and 70 photos. I mainly use Mail, Tweetbot, Facebook, and Safari, although the Photo app comes in handy when I need to take a picture of the chalkboard so I'll remember what to teach in the next section of my class.

When I started this process I had more than 20,000 email messages on my iPad. (I use POP because I believe in offline mail storage.) Now I have about 2,300 and Mail is much happier.

Now if everyone on this thread will post similar specs, we might be able to make some progress. All of this is on the General/About page in Settings.

Best,

Tony Lima

I'm sorry, I'm not sure why you replied to me, but I'm not experiencing any issues with my iPad. I was responding to the other poster with instructions on how to try and deal with the issue they reported.

You're welcome. You can import your photos to the computer. While you may not see them in the manner you would like to have them organized, they will be saved and not at risk of loss.

Well, this is an open forum so everyone can see what I posted. But, more important, since you're not having problems I'd like to know about your iPad. Just trying to gather some data.

FYI the mail app has stopped working again as of noon May 31 Pacific time.

Best,

Tony Lima

I understand that it is an open, and public forum. It is just that you chose to reply to me and made a statement about sorting things out, when I did not post that I was having a problem that needed sorting. But I will go along with your request.

iPad Mini 16GB

Wi-Fi & Cellular

iOS 8.3

12.7GB Capacity

2.6 GB Free

50 Apps

254 Songs

1 Video

612 Photos

I have 10MB mail, but my mail changes based on the setting I have for my Exchange account. It is set to sync one week's worth of mail.

My iPhone:

5s 32GB

26.7 GB Capacity

6.0 GB Free

110 Apps

1830 Songs

6 Videos

650 photos

I have 418 MB mail on this device. I have the same Exchange account set to sync 1 week, and an IMAP (Comcast) account, but I'm not sure how much mail is there but I know it is a lot. I don't have an exact count.

I use my iPad for Mail between classes I teach, and then a great deal with Safari for web access and reading news. The phone is used for mail constantly, iMessages and phone calls. I use it when outside the office for Safari as well. I'm guessing this is what you are asking for. I've never experienced problems with either of my mail accounts.

Who is your email provider?

We have a number of e-mail accounts. Several are gmail. The university where I teach contracts with Google for a special gmail setup which I also use. There are a couple of ancient att.net accounts. And we have two ISP's where we keep our blogs. I've tried to make all my accounts POP because I believe in being able to work offline. I currently have 8 email accounts active on my iPad. Mail takes up 2.9 gb.

Re your idea for throttling email downloads, that would be tricky because I also need to access mail on my Mac and my PC at the university. But it's something to think about.

Thanks very much for the info. And I apologize for my misplaced earlier posting.

Best,

Tony

You can only make changes to the amount of mail synced to an Exchange account. The other types of accounts do not have that setting. Your issue may have to do with the fact you are using POP protocol for the accounts. Since POP downloads the mail to the device, you are using a great deal of room on multiple devices. While that is your decision to make, it can make for quite a mess, since each mail client is individual. Also, what are you doing with the mail once it has been downloaded to all of your clients? Are you also retaining it on the servers? If so, while that does not make a problem for your portable devices, it could present a problem for your email servers, considering the amount of mail you are indicating. I really cannot think of that much mail I receive that has to be kept so long as to justify downloading that much mail to save on my portable devices. If I had to refer that far back to something, I would use my computer and the email client I use there, and clear things off the portable devices. As you mentioned earlier, you found the devices worked better after removing some of the mail. As far as Mail stopping working, what kind of error are you seeing when you say Mail stopped working in your earlier post.

I agree that it's a mess. On my Macs and PCs, I can archive the mail in hard drive folders. On the iPad, when I delete messages they get moved to the Trash folder. I then have to go through each account and empty each Trash folder. Mail doesn't seem to have a way to bulk delete. For example, I'd like to delete all mail more than a month old. If there's a way to do that, I would be overjoyed. But I'm not convinced that doing that actually frees the space used by the messages.

I get a lot of e-mail. Much of it is from students, other faculty, and the administration. But I have other interests besides economics. I'm a wine semi-professional and a techno-geek. That puts me on lots and lots of e-mail lists.

I figured out the "delete from server" trick. That reduced the number of messages from 20,000+ to 2,000+ and freed up 2.2 gb of storage (mail went from 5.1 to 2.9 gb).

The Mail app failure was simple: it would not launch properly. The furthest I got was the white Mail screen with no mailboxes or messages visible.

Speaking of the university I gotta go back to grading term papers. I'll get back to this Monday.

Best,
Tony Lima

You cannot bulk delete from the inbox, but you can bulk delete from Trash. I understand getting a log of mail. It is amazing how fast students can clog up my inbox, and every single publisher wants you to use their textbook, so I'm constantly getting mail as well. But, I have to force myself to better manage my mail on a regular basis, or it will consume me. I could not imagine trying to manage mail with POP protocol any longer. I would be spending more time managing mail and trying to keep the accounts on multiple devices in sync with each other. With a computer at work, one at home, an iPhone and an iPad, one single email would have to be deleted 4 times. Not the most efficient use of my time, but I'm not judging you. How you manage your work is your business. There is something else going on with your mail app causing it to crash like this, and I wonder if it is something with some errant mail, and the fact that you are using multiple devices to access POP, which it really is not designed to do.

Good luck as you try and work through this. I'm done for the Spring term and I'm getting ready for the Summer term to start on June 10.