Mail unusable since upgrade to Sierra

Question

Level 1

29 points

Mail unusable since upgrade to Sierra

When I first upgraded my iMAC to Sierra (10.12), Mail would crash every time I tried to select the "Sent" folder. Most other folders could be accessed fine; a few would also cause Mail to crash. Re-installed Sierra, no luck.

Today, Mail started crashing on a few other folders. Then, finally, it crashed altogether and will no longer re-open; every time I try to open the app I get a "Mail quit unexpectedly" dialog and dump. I believe this is the most pertinent information:

Crashed Thread: 6 Dispatch queue: com.apple.root.default-qos

Exception Type: EXC_CRASH (SIGABRT)

Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000000, 0x0000000000000000

Exception Note: EXC_CORPSE_NOTIFY

Application Specific Information:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[NSNull length]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x7fffb4d7cf10'

abort() called

terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException

Once again I re-installed Sierra, but still cannot open Mail at all. Any thoughts?

iMac

Posted on Oct 4, 2016 2:26 PM

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Answer 1

rkwpcy

Level 1

4 points

May 15, 2017 7:46 PM in response to PTDiMarzio

For future readers, here is a solution that worked. It seems Apple Mail crashes when it gets too large (too much data stored). Unfortunately, Apple isn't smart enough to build and alert to tell you Mail has reached its limit. It took me a while to figure this out. I wish I could charge my time to Apple for doing such a good job of wasting it.

Quit Mail completely
Turn Off WiFi
Launch Mail app, access Mail>Preferences>Accounts
Disable existing accounts added one by one by unchecking the box beside each account
Back-up old emails to an external drive. Delete old emails from Mail.
Quit Mail again, connect to the internet, then relaunch Mail.
Enable all account one by one again. Remember that you should let each account download all it’s mail before you enable the next one.

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Answer 2

avisiedo

Level 1

8 points

Jan 4, 2017 11:49 AM in response to PTDiMarzio

I have been the same problem. Sometimes after try to open several times (3 or 4) the problem solved magically. Today I have experienced another situation, it was crashing all the time, however, when I have closed Spotify, and I have tried again to open Mail, the problem was solved. I don't know how can interfere this application into the mail application, or what can try to use Mail app that can be related with Spotify, it has been really weird.

Please apple, give a solution to this problem, the image of the company is wore and wore with this sort of things.

Regards.

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Answer 3

Jan 27, 2017 1:53 PM in response to plinke

THANK YOU, soooo much! Luckily, I only tried one of the suggested "fixes" before I found your suggestion which was also cited by danawcook on December 7, 2016. Now I just have to figure out how to get my SOUND to work again. (Ugh! Sierra!)

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Answer 4

CAO557

Level 1

4 points

May 29, 2017 3:16 PM in response to iDriss_5555

This pointed me in the right direction. I've not been able to use Mail for 3 yrs because it was "not responding" and then would crash. After finding this post I remembered during internet outages I could access my old email and folders. I could enable and disable my email accounts by going into my System's Preferences and selecting Internet Accounts. Disabling one of the old email accounts discontinued by Time Warner (after they bought a local company) fixed the problem. Many thanks.

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Answer 5

Jun 15, 2017 11:29 AM in response to PTDiMarzio

I had all the same issues, mail not working after a Sierra upgrade. I found that some of my emails were ok, and others were not. There was a setting in Google (Gmail) under Settings/ Sign-In & Security/Allow less secure apps. I turned this feature ON, and all my non working email accounts now work. I hope this helps! Some full disclosure: I still have 1 AOL that is not working, but 1 that is.

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Answer 6

Jun 15, 2017 11:32 AM in response to PTDiMarzio

I had all the same issues, mail not working after a Sierra upgrade. I found that some of my emails were ok, and others were not. There was a setting in Google (Gmail) under Settings/ Sign-In & Security/Allow less secure apps. I turned this feature ON, and all my non working email accounts now work. I hope this helps! Some full disclosure: I still have 1 AOL that is not working, but 1 that is.

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Answer 7

Oct 4, 2016 3:54 PM in response to PTDiMarzio

Hi PTDiMarzio,

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities.

You can fix Mac OS X 10.12 Sierra Mail not responding (“Mail quit unexpectedly”) by removing the container folder ‘com.apple.mail.savedState’. Mac OS X saves window locations and open documents of most programs to restore them when the program is launched again after quit. Sometimes after upgrading Mac OS X to the latest version, there can be some handling issues with the prior saved state of Mail which could lead to Sierra Mail is not responding and crashing.

How to remove Mail saved state:

Force quit of Mail app (‘Application not responding‘ issue!).
Go to the Finder.
Hold the Option key and then select ‘Library‘ from the ‘Go‘ menu.
Go to the folder ‘Containers > com.apple.mail > Data > Library > Saved Application State‘ and move the folder called ‘com.apple.mail.savedState‘ to the trash.
Empty trash.
Restart your Mac.
Re-launch Mail.

Hope this will help.

Cheers !

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Answer 8

PTDiMarzio Author

Level 1

29 points

Oct 4, 2016 4:29 PM in response to iDriss_5555

Thanks for the tip. I followed the procedure to remove the folder but the problem persists. Mail will not open; it crashes while it tries to come up. I have verified that the folder is in fact gone.

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Answer 9

Oct 5, 2016 1:09 PM in response to PTDiMarzio

Well, maybe it comes from multiple email accounts active in the app.

The initial download of all messages from all accounts seems to be overloading the app, causing it to crash.

See if this works for you:

1. Before opening the Mail app, turn off your wifi connection (prevents mail from trying to download mailboxes from all accounts at once).

2. Launch Mail app and go to Mail -> Preference -> Accounts tab.

3. Click each of your accounts on the left side of the Accounts window, then uncheck the box next to "Enable this account." Disable all of your mail accounts.

4. Close Preference and close the Mail app.

5. Relaunch the mail app and reconnect to wifi.

6. Go back to Mail -> Preferences -> Accounts tab, and enable the first account. Give the app plenty of time to download all messages until you no longer see "Checking for Mail..." at the bottom left of the app screen (may take a few minutes depending on how many messages you have on the server).

7. Once the app is no longer "Checking for Mail..." repeat this server for each of your other accounts. I saved Gmail until last since it's my biggest, which took the longest - about 5 minutes (I use multiple Gmail accounts).

After enabling all accounts, the crash issue should stop.

Hope it works !

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Answer 10

PTDiMarzio Author

Level 1

29 points

Oct 5, 2016 1:26 PM in response to iDriss_5555

Thanks for the continued help. I do have multiple accounts attached to Mail. I disconnected from the network (I'm hardwired but ensured wifi was not on and there was no connection active), tried to open Mail, and it failed as it tried to open - as it has been doing. So no luck.

Downloading shouldn't have been the issue anyway because I had already been working with Mail on Sierra for several weeks, so any download/indexing should have already occurred. For a time - immediately following the upgrade - the problem I had was a Mail failure when I tried to access the sent mail folder, but I could otherwise work with Mail just fine. Then I started getting failures trying to open other folders, and finally it failed on its own and ceased to start up anymore.

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Answer 11

Oct 5, 2016 2:22 PM in response to PTDiMarzio

Well, I'm starting to run out of ideas 😁

Maybe this will help then -> Mail unexpectedly quits when viewing certain messages

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Answer 12

PTDiMarzio Author

Level 1

29 points

Oct 5, 2016 2:22 PM in response to iDriss_5555

ok - now we're making progress!! With the shift key held, Mail does in fact open up and stay open. For four out of my five email accounts, I can click the account's inbox and use the message viewer, no problem. If I click on the inbox for that fifth account, though, it's immediate failure (I can't view the list of messages even with the viewer hidden). I'll still get failure on the Sent mail folder, and some other folders, but many folders I can view.

So now it's starting to look as if the database was corrupted during the upgrade, possibly for just this one account. Can you point me to directions for deleting and rebuilding my local copy?

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Answer 13

PTDiMarzio Author

Level 1

29 points

Oct 6, 2016 5:51 AM in response to PTDiMarzio

As a follow-up, I followed the procedures I found here (http://www.computerworld.com/article/2476217/mac-os-x/mac-os-x-how-to-fix-apple- mail-by-rebuilding-and-reindexing-the-ma…) to both rebuild, then reindex, the mail folders. I'm in about the same situation as I've been: I can work with my inboxes, but mail will crash if I try to see the Sent mail folder or about 1/3 of my file folders. Is there a process in place for totally scrubbing Mail, getting it to it's "first install" point, then re-adding the accounts as if for the first time? There's clearly some nasty issue on my machine and it's taking too long to track down! Thanks.

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Answer 14

Oct 12, 2016 8:09 AM in response to PTDiMarzio

just go to " go " option key -> library -> rename folder " mail " and setup your mail again and it will work...

then have to see if there was mail in local folders to import them back.

just done it right now on someones Mac Book Pro freshly updated to sierra

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Answer 15

PTDiMarzio Author

Level 1

29 points

Oct 12, 2016 2:19 PM in response to Cedric Degeneve

Thanks for the tip Cedric but the issue would seem to be with Mail files elsewhere. I did rename the mail folder and open up the app ... but I did not have to go through any setup process; Mail still knew about my accounts, even the folders. Yes it did go through the long process of downloading all the messages and rebuilding indices (effectively creating the mail folder again from scratch) but the app will still fail when I click on the Sent mail and certain other folders. So there is something amiss elsewhere, I just don't know where to look!

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