When an application crashes (i.e. quits unexpectedly), the system writes information about the state of the application at the moment of the crash to a log file. That information is called a crash report and makes troubleshooting easier. In order to find and post the relevant part of the crash report here, proceed as follows:
1. Open
~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/Mail.crash.log. The whole crash log appears in a Console window (you can also open that file with any text editor). It may contain many crash reports. We only want the latest, which is located at the bottom of the file.
2. Look for a line that begins with “Date/Time:” as close to the bottom as possible, and another that says “Thread
N Crashed:”, where
N is a number. Select everything from the “Date/Time:” line to the lines immediately following “Thread
N Crashed:”. Copy that text and paste it in your post.
Do not post the whole crash log, and do not include anything beyond the lines immediately following “Thread
N Crashed:” either, just the relevant part.
Take a look at the following thread for examples of what a crash report looks like:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=466701
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder, i.e. ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder.