Outbox stuck with large attachment, mail frozen

Raja Hornstein wrote:

I already tried this. No luck. The message shows that it's "loading" which keeps spinning until the beachball returns and then the computer crashes completely.

If the computer is not connected to the Internet then the email will not try to load, it has nowhere to load to if not connected. I''ll assume you did indeed remove the computer from the Internet I.E. turned off wifi or disconnected the network cable if so connected. Once the email is no longer trying to load it should be a simple matter to delete it from the outbox. So I'm at a loss and willl leave it to you and Linc to work it out. Good luck to you.

This solution worked for me (thank you), but I'm having trouble getting the server back up. I added back all the information, except the password. It says that it went through, no password required. If a password really is required, how to I figure out what it is? (I'm paraphrasing, so hopefully this makes sense).

From the Mail menu bar, please select

Window ▹ Connection Doctor

Look for the outgoing mail (SMTP) account in the window that opens. Double-click it. Another window will open, showing a list of all the outgoing mail accounts. The affected one will be selected. Make a note of the settings. Click the minus-sign button to delete it, then click OK.

Add the account back with the same settings.

Disconnect your computer from the Internet. Boot up your computer and start Mail. Delete the email from your outbox. Reconnect to the Internet and you should be fine.

When you see a beachball cursor, note the exact time: hour, minute, second.

These instructions must be carried out as an administrator. If you have only one user account, you are the administrator.

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.

Each message in the log begins with the date and time when it was entered. Scroll back to the time you noted above.

Select the messages entered from then until the end of the episode, or until they start to repeat, whichever comes first.

Copy the messages 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 it useless for 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, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.

When you post the log extract, you might see an error message on the web page: "You have included content in your post that is not permitted," or "The message contains invalid characters." That's a bug in the forum software. Please post the text on Pastebin, then post a link here to the page you created.

If you have an account on Pastebin, please don't select Private from the Paste Exposure menu on the page, because then no one but you will be able to see it.

I was wondering if that would damage the database irreparably.

Damage, yes. Irreparably, probably not. In any case, there was no reason to do it.

The original question was answered by Linc Davis.