Apple Mail takes a long time to respond

[wab123]

Hi, I've got a 2017 MacBook Air running 10.14.4. Over the last few weeks, Mail has been and is, very slow to respond.
Example: to open a new message takes around 5 seconds, it used to be quite a bit faster.
I suspect this is caused by our 'Direct Wireless' Broadband connection (Australia, NBN thru Telstra) which is delivering poor and fluctuating service.
However, on looking thru the forum it appears that many others have found Apple's Mail app is slow in operation. I see others have been advised to abandon Mail and go to others like Thunderbird or Gmail.

Are there any other possible causes that would make Mail slow to respond ?
Thanks.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

It could be a few things:
-The poor and fluctuating connection
-Do you have a large number of emails stored in your Inbox?
-How many email accounts are setup in the Mail application?
-Do you have any third-party utilities like MacKeeper or an antivirus running?
-How much free drive space do you have?

We'll go from there and see what we can determine.

C

 

[wab123]

Hi Cory, thanks for responding.
I neglected to mention that it's not just Mail that's slow and I'm wondering if I've acquired some 'disease'.
Firstly to answer your questions:
I think we can discount the 'poor' connection, on reflection, I think it quite satisfactory.
My Inbox contains only 2 months of incoming mail, with the advent of April, I go back and delete all of February and there is none beyond that i.e. I hold only 2 months max.
I have 2 email accounts, Telstra (BigPond) and Gmail.
Not Mackeeper, no, never ! Tried it a few years ago and it ended in tears. Big Tears ! !
I have AVG anti-virus,2 days ago, it advised I am "clean".
I also have Fiplab Battery Health and Memory Clear. There are others but not many, I'm not an app-a-holic !
I have a 500 SSD HDD SMO512G, currently I have 236GB available.

I cannot come to grips with Apples "Pages", have been using MS Word for the last 20 odd years, currently using Word for Mac 2011.
I noticed today, Word is also very slow. I had 12 month subscription to MS Office 365 2016 but this has just expired and I am not renewing, they've made it too user unfriendly for me, perhaps it's just too 'smart', using it is a hassle.
Thanks,
Warren

 

[Cory Cooper]

OK, thanks.

-If the connection is good, then it is probably something else.
-Mail will always be faster with fewer items in the Inbox. If you end up deleting them all after two months, you could try creating another mailbox, drag the emails from the Inbox to it, then use the same schedule to delete them. That way, when you start Mail, it has less syncing to do with the Inbox between your Mac and the email server of your provider.
-Good on no MacKeeper!
-AVG - I would try disabling the Realtime Protection functions. You can still run AVG manually when needed. Sometimes those features can slow down your Mac drastically, as they are actively scanning every file accessed/opened.

C