Mail becomes incredibly slow, but only if I download attachments

Question

Level 1

59 points

Mail becomes incredibly slow, but only if I download attachments

Mail becomes incredibly slow, but only if I download attachments (photos, pdf files etc]

This has been happening a lot lately.

If I receive a message with, say, a few photos attached Mail works fine. However, if I then download the attached files to my iMac mail then becomes incredibly slow, even if I delete the email with the files. If I shut down Mail and then relaunch the problem persists... I literally get the spinning beachball if I want to compose a message... everything still works but each action takes forever. I tried rebuilding the Mailbox but that doesn't work. The only way to get mail to work properly (at normal speed) is to relaunch the computer.

Any ideas

[I have 24gb ram on late 2012 3.4ghz iMac with a 3TB fusion drive]

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.5), 128GB Wi-Fi iPad Pro [big one]

Posted on Jul 5, 2016 9:52 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Jul 5, 2016 2:33 PM in response to media_lush

A Safe Mode boot deletes system caches that may help ..

Follow these steps to start up into safe mode.

Start or restart your Mac.
Immediately after you hear the startup sound, press and hold the Shift key.
Release the Shift key when you see the Apple logo appear on the screen.

After the Apple logo appears, it might take longer than usual to reach the login screen or your desktop. This is because your Mac performs a directory check of your startup disk as part of safe mode.

To leave safe mode, restart your computer without pressing any keys during startup.

Then try downloading an attachment.

Reply

Answer 2

media_lush Author

Level 1

59 points

Jul 5, 2016 10:15 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

Thanks for the suggestion; unfortunately I tried this but nothings changed.

Reply

Answer 3

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Jul 5, 2016 2:29 PM in response to media_lush

create a new account with administrative rights,

OS X El Capitan: Set up users on your Mac

boot into that account

configure your mail.

if the problem is resolved you may consider deleting your mail file on your previous account and rebuilding it

do a full backup before proceeding.

Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac - Apple Support

Reply

Answer 4

media_lush Author

Level 1

59 points

Jul 5, 2016 2:33 PM in response to JimmyCMPIT

thanks for the advice... I'll try and do this in a couple of days when I have a bit more time.

One thing I forgot to mention which I think might be relevant is that when I get new mail the mail count on the icon always doubles up the actual amount... if I was to get 3 emails the icon in the dock would show 6.... FTR I have my regular ISP, hotmail, yahoo and gmail accounts

Reply

Answer 5

Jul 5, 2016 7:14 PM in response to media_lush

I suspect your settings in your accounts are set incorrectly for Sent messages. I know Gmail and Hotmail saves your sent messages and I suspect that Yahoo does as well. If you select to save Sent then you will get doubles.

Normally you want to save your sent messages in your Sent folder. Don’t do this. When sending from Gmail’s server for example, your sent messages will be automatically copied to the [Gmail]/Sent folder.

For each of your accounts, try unchecking "Store sent messages on the server". Be sure to save the changes by clicking out of the account after changing the option.

Please check in your User's Library/Mail/V2 folder. Is there anything in this folder except MailData folder?

Reply

Answer 6

media_lush Author

Level 1

59 points

Jul 5, 2016 10:05 PM in response to dianeoforegon

I unchecked store sent messages for my webmail accounts.... I took a screen grab of my users folder ... no idea if there's any problem here....?

Reply

Answer 7

Jul 6, 2016 10:48 AM in response to media_lush

You can delete the Mail Lost+Found folder. It was from a crash in 2015.

If you see a MailData folder in V3, you can go ahead and delete the V2 folder. It is no longer being used. I've seen a couple of rare cases where OS X 10.11 El Capitan Mail would try to save back account folders to V2 folder. This would cause really odd problems. Everything in El Capitan Mail is supposed to be in V3 folder.

You've also got a mix of the new naming folders letters/numbers and the actual names of the accounts. The old names made it easier if you needed to delete the account to start clean.

If you continue with problems, let me know and we can do a clean install of everything or just the accounts that are problematic. NEVER delete a POP account without first archiving your default folders (Inbox, Drafts, Sent) first.

Reply