Vuurbal

Q: Mail keeps crashing

Dear all,

 

Since a few months Mail crashes several times a day. It mostly happens when I move emails into folders, when I delete some, ...

 

Of course I have already tried to adress the problem by looking for similar problems with given solutions. Unfortunately nothing has helped so far. I have tried the following:

 

- deactivating all mailboxes and reactivating them, as described here.

- rebuilding the mail index, as described here.

 

I have reported this to Apple for like hundreds of times, but I doubt they read those reports. Sadly I cannot permit myself to delete everything and take a "fresh start" with Mail as I have plenty of rules, thousands of emails, ... 

 

You can find the crash report here.

 

Thank you so much in advance. Mail is probably the most important app I use, so you can imagine how aggravating it is to see it constantly crashing.

MacBook Pro (13-inch Late 2011), OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Mar 11, 2016 1:53 AM

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Q: Mail keeps crashing

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  • by tongej,

    tongej tongej Mar 11, 2016 2:42 AM in response to Vuurbal
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mar 11, 2016 2:42 AM in response to Vuurbal

    Hello,

     

    I was just going to report exactly the same. I have tried everything, as you comment. Nothing helped. To me Mail was the best email application in the market, it this does not change I will have to move but I would rather not.

     

    Mail was one of the reasons I liked Mac, Mail was so good.

  • by Vuurbal,

    Vuurbal Vuurbal Mar 23, 2016 4:33 AM in response to tongej
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 23, 2016 4:33 AM in response to tongej

    Very frustrating to see they didn't even bother to fix it in the new update 10.11.4.

    A stupid bug with VIP mailboxes, that's what they fixed. Congratulations, Apple. 3 months of work, 7 betas and not even close to fixing it.

     

    Next to that I'm also having issues with the count number in the dock. Very often it shows "1 unread" while there are no unread emails. This has been the case since Yosemite. The only solution to temporarily get it right is to restart Mail or the Dock. It's a shame Apple doesn't hear our voices.

  • by squire001,

    squire001 squire001 Mar 23, 2016 7:33 AM in response to Vuurbal
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mar 23, 2016 7:33 AM in response to Vuurbal

    I am experiencing repeated MAIL crashes, too.  Problem is worse

    now that I applied the 10.11.4 update.  The MAIL application is almost

    unusable at this point.  It used to be my most reliable program!

     

    I have a mid 2011 iMac with 2.7Ghz processor.

    All was well until I applied the El Capitan 10.11.4 & iTunes update.

     

    Also, the machine run very slowly for a while , then seemingly

    seem normal for a while....

    Any suggestions for a fix...??

    I'm no geek, but want my machine to function properly again.

    Safari and Mail are pretty much all I run, so I don't think I'm taxing the machine's horsepower here.

    I'll wait a good long time before I rush to install "updates" in the future.

  • by tongej,

    tongej tongej Apr 7, 2016 1:17 AM in response to squire001
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 7, 2016 1:17 AM in response to squire001

    I found no working solution, I have tried all the options posted in different forums but they do not work. Mail is still crashing and Apple does not seem to release a good patch. My only way around was to move to Thunderbird, I do not like it as much but certainly is more stable.

  • by Vuurbal,

    Vuurbal Vuurbal Apr 7, 2016 6:31 AM in response to tongej
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 7, 2016 6:31 AM in response to tongej

    Yesterday I tried the following by deleting these:

     

    - Caches/com.apple.mail

    - Containers/com.apple.mail

    - Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

    - Library/Mail/V3/MailData (the whole folder)

    - Library/Mail/V2


    By doing so I lost no mails, everything was put back in order. You do have to re-set up your preferences though.


    It seemed to work as it hasn't crashed yet.


    If it crashes again I'll let you know.

  • by squire001,

    squire001 squire001 Apr 7, 2016 6:55 AM in response to Vuurbal
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Apr 7, 2016 6:55 AM in response to Vuurbal

    Thanks Vuurbal

     

    I'm not very tech savvy, so exactly which folders or areas did you go to to

    delete these 5 areas?  Where do I go to access them?

     

    Also, I should post out that I have observed the problem only on iCloud (imap) emails this past week.

    My other email accounts do not seem to crash the Mail app. 

     

    One last question.... how do I re-establsih the "count" or, sequential numbering of my emails ....?

    That disappeared when I "upgraded" El Capitan......

    squire001

  • by Vuurbal,

    Vuurbal Vuurbal Apr 7, 2016 7:26 AM in response to squire001
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 7, 2016 7:26 AM in response to squire001

    Hey squire,

     

    I have 3 accounts and they're all imap, so I presume the problem happens with that structure. Nonetheless I gotta say that there have been many issues around with Exchange as well. It's odd to see that the Apple engineers can't seem to get Mail right, probably one of the easiest apps to program...

     

    As for the folders:

    Open finder > hold the Alt-button on keyboard > Select "Go" from the menu bar > Library.

    From there you will find all the needed folders: Caches, Containers, Preferences and Mail.

     

    You can set up the unread count by clicking Preferences in the menu bar > General > Count unread in Dock. However, in my case the count is rarely correct. It often happens that Mail shows 1 unread while there are no unread messages. Another unfixed bug...

     

    Let's hope this is a working solution for the crashes. I've been working about 7 hours today and haven't experienced a single crash. Also moved and deleted quite a bit of emails, which usually triggers the app to crash. Fingers crossed!

  • by tongej,

    tongej tongej Apr 7, 2016 9:12 AM in response to Vuurbal
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 7, 2016 9:12 AM in response to Vuurbal

    Thanks! I have done it 2-3 times already (cleaning/deleting everything and downloading mails again) but it did not really help. I will try again just in case. My worry is that it is because I have about 100k messages in my inbox, but that was not a problem before.

  • by ricgongar,

    ricgongar ricgongar Apr 11, 2016 4:21 PM in response to tongej
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Apr 11, 2016 4:21 PM in response to tongej

    After I reported the issue to Apple, the next day, it was suddenly started to work for me. It seems that this was a Microsoft issue and could be that they resolved it. It is working back to normal since Saturday.

  • by Vuurbal,

    Vuurbal Vuurbal Apr 11, 2016 9:26 PM in response to ricgongar
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Apr 11, 2016 9:26 PM in response to ricgongar

    Sadly it remains unsolved here. I thought the issue was gone after I reset Mail, but that didn't last long.

     

    I guess I'll have to wait until they finally address the problem...