mail preferences general not showing

mjkish wrote:

I've tried:

• Disk Utility from the desktop and from recovery disk
• Reinstalling Mojave from the recovery disk (on top of my current installation)
• Running maintenance scripts in Cocktail

... and nothing has worked. Looks like I'll have to do without Mail preferences for the week and reinstall from scratch this weekend. What a pain in the arse.

If Cocktail was used prior to this issue— I would be highly suspect this may have lead to the issue to begin with.

Cocktail has been known to cause problems running script.

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One afterthought— try remove the mail container.

Quit mail.

Finder>Go>Go to Folder, copy & Paste:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail

Highlight all the contents.

Then right-click and choose "New Folder with Selection”. Do not move the new folder from this current location.

You can close the Finder window.

The next step will be to restart the Mac and test

ref:Re: Mail preference window blank in High Sierra

To trouble shoot further you can:

Try a SafeBoot https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201262

Takes noticeable longer to get to the login screen, does a 5 minute disk repair before it loads up, and certain system caches, dynamic loader cache, etc. get cleared and rebuilt.

This test will tell you if third party interference; extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

Test issue in another user (or guest user) account https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204443

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account.

I've tried:

• Disk Utility from the desktop and from recovery disk
• Reinstalling Mojave from the recovery disk (on top of my current installation)
• Running maintenance scripts in Cocktail

... and nothing has worked. Looks like I'll have to do without Mail preferences for the week and reinstall from scratch this weekend. What a pain in the arse.

Yes! Moving the contents of "Containers > com.apple.mail" did the trick! It's redownloading all 36k+ emails, but that's a small price to pay for not having to reinstall OSX 😀

Thank you so much!!!

mjkish wrote:

Yes! Moving the contents of "Containers > com.apple.mail" did the trick! It's redownloading all 36k+ emails, but that's a small price to pay for not having to reinstall OSX 😀

Thank you so much!!!

Good computing mjkish— glad this solved your problem.

mjkish wrote:

Yes! Moving the contents of "Containers > com.apple.mail" did the trick! It's redownloading all 36k+ emails, but that's a small price to pay for not having to reinstall OSX 😀

Thank you so much!!!

mjkish — just following up to see if your problems returned with mail or the issue was a final resolve?

TomTom2204 wrote:

Hey Leroy,

I tried SafeBoot, didn't solve the issue.

I tried the other user account, there the issue is not existing.

>> standard functions are showing - like screenshot of sberman above.

It seems it is isolated to my main administrator user account.

>> still blank grey window

other ideas?

TomTom2204—

only now do I realize your thread got hijacked.

Did you still need help with your issue?

TomTom2204 wrote:

Hey Leroy,

you are a magician! that was under a minute and it solved the issue!!!

Apple support should higher you !!!

I wasted hours with 7 different advisors, nobody came up with this!

Highly appreciate your help!

All the best

Thomas

Good report TomTom2204 ! Thanks for the feedback.

It works just fine for me.

I think you're saying the other Preferences tabs (e.g., Accounts) work just fine, and it's only the General tab that shows nothing. Very odd.

You can re-install the macOS on top of your existing macOS from the Recovery.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4718

Take a look at your system config using the http://etrecheck.com

If you need help interpreting the output, post the results here for trouble shooting.

That doesn't show anything helpful, unfortunately.

Yup, everything is still working properly... Apple Mail preferences for days! Haha 🙂 Thanks for checking in... and thanks again for your help! 😀