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El Capitan Mail Preview Pane issue

I shrunk the message preview pane in the mail app all the way down and now I can not get it to return. I have tried the following steps:


1) Toggling classic view on and off


2) resizing the window and going to full screen in order to better click on the dot in the middle of the preview pane bar but that only allows me to resize the window.


3) double clicking the dot on the preview pane bar at the bottom - produces no effect


4) removing the mail plist file from the Library Containers


5) tried to use apple script to directly set the preview pane to true, but that produces an error and apparently has not worked since mavericks


Is there any documentation on how to either toggle this with apple script, or which file the preview pane option is actually stored in?


Any help at this point would be much appreciated!


I can't believe this is not an option in the view setttings...

MacBook Air, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 20, 2015 1:37 PM

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58 replies

Jun 22, 2017 10:53 AM in response to swim2lakes

I too have an excessive inbox. (Hint to people trying the rebild-it-and-reboot method: It takes a looong time and gives no particular indication when the rebuild is complete; wait for the CPU usage for Mail in Activity Monitor to go and stay at a low figure, less than, say,10%.) The rebuilding method still didn't fix it, and I still haven't pared my Inbox; I found the answer in a later posting: PRETEND that you're dragging up that dot *continuously*, never lifting your finger. And it worked!

Oct 26, 2015 10:58 PM in response to redsfan1976

@redsfan1976. Please try again, so Classic view, rebuild mailbox(es), restart computer and when you than go to the bar with the dot at the bottom of the screen and your cursor turn into a small bar with an arrow, pull the bar up, but not just a few centimeter but almost to the top of the screen. Pulling the bar up higher than I did before did the trick for me.

Oct 27, 2015 5:20 AM in response to Arnhem

I have both problems: (1) The update to El Capitan 10.11.1 stalled 3/4 through the process and I have since reverted (via a SuperDuper! backup) to El Capitan 10.11, and (2) it was after going though that process, and while my early 2013 Retina MacBook Pro was under El Capitan 10.11, that I ran into the missing message preview pane in Mail problem. But to reiterate what I said above, the above fix for the restoring the missing preview pane problem works for me. Last evening I noticed that the preview pane had disappeared again, and I applied the same fix and it worked to restore the preview pane again.

Oct 27, 2015 5:45 AM in response to Arnhem

Thanks for all the replies. Really appreciate it. I can switch to classic view, but when I click on "rebuild" mail shuts down and I get the message that "mail quit unexpectedly" and then asks if I want to report this issue. I have tried restarting my computer and then doing the process all over again but it does the same thing all over again.

El Capitan Mail Preview Pane issue

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