Hi, I would like to follow-up by reporting what solved my problem and thanking everyone who offered suggestions.
In my case, Apple Mail would crash as soon as I tried to start it up. I could not use any options within Apple Mail because it would crash before I could do anything. I tried deleting some .plist files, but that did not help. The solution for my problem was to delete (or move to the Desktop) the following 3 files: Envelope Index, Envelope Index-shm, and Envelope Index-wal (and let Apple Mail recreate them). [Thanks Andy]. I am running Yosemite (10.10.5) and those 3 files are located in: /Users/my-user-name/Library/Mail/V2/MailData Apparently these files may be located elsewhere in other versions of MacOSX. For example, I believe that in Sierra they are located in: /Users/your-user-name/Library/Mail/V4/ After removing these files, I started Apple Mail and it did not crash! Instead, it gave me some sort of Welcome to Mail panel, such as when one uses Apple Mail for the first time. It offered to import my mail (and mailboxes). It did not even ask where to look. I said yes and it imported all of my email, which probably took about 20 to 30 minutes (over 120,000 files). When it finished, things seemed to be back to normal. I believe that this procedure essentially rebuilds the mail database. There are probably commands to accomplish this (or something similar) from the command line (in Terminal). I'm not sure what caused my original problem. I know that when I was copying mailboxes, the process would stop (but not crash) when encountering an old bounce notice (i.e., an email message that the address to which I tried to send an email was not valid). I don't know why that would be a problem, since the bounce notice would show up fine in the original mailbox, but for some reason it did not like being copied to another mailbox. Also, I have no idea why I kept some of these old bounce messages! In other cases, the copying would get stuck and Apple Mail would hang (but not crash). I'm not sure when this would happen, but perhaps a severe case of this is what caused my endless crashing problem. In any event, things seem to be working again now. I just wanted to pass along the solution for my particular problem, in hopes that it will help someone else in the future. I also wanted to thank everyone who offered suggestions and helped me out. Thanks! Gregg > On Apr 6, 2017, at 5:28 PM, Dinse, Gregg (NIH/NIEHS) [C] > <di...@niehs.nih.gov> wrote: > > Hi, > > Every time I try to open Apple Mail, it crashes. My wild guess is that the > issue is related to a corrupted file. > > I had been copying mailboxes from the "On My Mac" section to a new folder in > the Inbox section. The copying was going fine for a while and then stopped > part way through one of the mailboxes. At some point, I forced Apple Mail to > quit because it was stuck. Now when I try to open Apple Mail, it begins the > start up process and then shows a panel that says "Ignore" or "Report" or > "Reopen". If I click "Ignore" and then try again, I get the same panel. If > I click "Report" and send information to Apple, the Mail app remains closed. > If I click "Reopen", then I get the same panel. So, no choice allows me to > open Apple Mail. When it begins the start up process, I can see the Mail > window for a second (before Mail quits) and the "problem" mailbox is > highlighted. > > I tried logging out and rebooting, but neither helped. I tried removing the > 4 mail .plist files in my Library/Mail/Preferences folder, but that did not > help. I even deleted the mailbox that I think may be the culprit, but that > did not help. > > Is there a file I can delete so that Apple Mail does not "remember" to start > by opening that mailbox, and instead points to some default like the Inbox? > > Does anyone have any other suggestions? > > Thanks in advance for any help. > > Gregg _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list MacOSX-talk@omnigroup.com http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
