Need help with "Mail". Won't load and gives me no options, not even Quit.

[rgG]

My Mail application is not responding. When it opens it looks like it is trying to fetch the mail, but nothing is moving. The little dial that shows progress is at about the one o'clock mark and is stuck there. I can't open any emails and it will not let me go to a different mailbox. All choices, including Quit are greyed out, it is just stuck and won't budge. I have forced quit and restarted the program several times, repaired permissions, restarted the computer, and I am at a loss for what else to do. It is like it is hung up, but I don't know what to do to get it to reset.

I have checked the email account it is wired up to, at the online web portal, and it is working. It is only wired up to one IMAP account. It is whatever version of Mail came with Tiger. It won't even let me look at the "about Mail" option, it is also greyed out. Anything I click just gives me the "ding" sound and does nothing.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. I am at a total loss here.

[decay]

try going into your home folder, Library > Mail, and move Envelope Index to the Desktop, then open Mail again.

[rgG]

decay wrote:
try going into your home folder, Library > Mail, and move Envelope Index to the Desktop, then open Mail again.

Thanks decay, that worked for a minute, had to do it a couple of times, but when I quit and restart it is back to where I started. I am trying it again to see if it will maybe be a permanent fix this time.

OK, now I am back to Mail looking normal, but I can't open any emails, even ones I have sent.

I was able to send a message, and it shows that "windows" for messages I have tried to open are open, but they are not.

It is now fetching mail, but I still can't see the window that it thinks it is opening.


AAARRRRRRGH!!!!

[rgG]

When I quit and reopen Mail, I am back to square one.

Any more suggestions? Is there anything else I can trash and start over with?

[rgG]

I got out my backup drive and copied the Mail folder from it to my iMac. Still same problem. I then tried to launch Mail from the backup drive and still the same problem. I was able to launch Mail from another User, one that does not have the IMAP account on it, and it seemed to work. I really don't know what to trash.

[Doc]

Hmm... You're running Tiger?

'Might be a haxie, background app, plugin or font cache issue. 'Might be a corrupt attachment. Might be something else.

Do a safe boot and then try the Envelope Index trick again.

If it launches normally, rebuild each of your mailboxes from the Mailbox menu.

[rgG]

Doc wrote:
Hmm... You're running Tiger?

'Might be a haxie, background app, plugin or font cache issue. 'Might be a corrupt attachment. Might be something else.

Do a safe boot and then try the Envelope Index trick again.

If it launches normally, rebuild each of your mailboxes from the Mailbox menu.

No hacks installed, don't have a clue what else it might have been. After the Envelope temporary fix, I did try rebuilding the Mailbox and that didn't work either. I finally gave up and trashed the Mail .plist and just made a new account. Thanks to the Envelope Index trick, I was able to get all the account information and just re-entered it. It "seems" to be working right now, and it is importing the messages from the IMAP server. At least now I can open an email and see the window.

The only reason I use Mail for this is so I can get notifications when a new email arrives. I would just use the web portal, it is my work account, but I can't get a notification that way. Hopefully whatever was corrupted is fixed now and it will hold.

Thanks Doc, and decay.