Mail on Mac Mini is choking!

[alm49er]

My Mac Mini, running MAC OS 10.3.9, is choking on an email with a large attachment. (My goof!) The email is sitting in the Outbox and each time Mail is opened, it tries to send it, spins the Beach Ball for awhile and then Crashes Mail. If it would get to the point where the spinning stopped and told me that the file is too large, I could just delete it. But that doesn't happen. So how can I delete this item without opening Mail? Where do I look for it? In the Library or cache or something?

My other thought is to trash Mail entirely and do a reinstall, perhaps of the Mac OS or can I get Mail by itself from the Apple website?

Alan

 

[Cory Cooper]

Go

Well, if you feel courageous...you can navigate and delete it manually:

Macintosh HD > Users > yourname > Library > Mail > Outbox.mbox > Messages

There should be a file in this folder that is the email it's choking on.

Of course, I highly recommend backing up/making a copy of the entire Mail folder in case something happens...delete at your own risk.

Delete that file and you should be all set...

 

[alm49er]

Cory-
That did it! Thanks. However, when I looked for the name "Outbox" when the problem first came up, I didn't see it. On my computer there was an intermediate folder called Import. So the actual path I used was:

Users/(Edited name for your protection)/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Import/Outbox.mbox

Just trashing the Outbox.mbox file freed things up.

Alan

 

[searay345]

Hey alm49er. Glad to hear that it worked out for you! I took out your name in your path description so "bad" people wouldn't get it.

 

[Cory Cooper]

Go

Glad it worked too. You must have imported old Mail data or used the Migration Assistant? That would be the cause of the Import intermediate folder.

Cheers...

 

[GerryP]

Alan,

Try using COMMAND + OPTION + ESCAPE to force quit Mail when you see the spinning beach ball and then follow this path to delete the file. First put your window in the column mode (top of window under red, yellow, green buttons) so you can see the exact path from left to right then starting at your HOME directory select (don't double-click) Library, then scroll down to Mail, then Mailboxes, then Outbox.mbox, then Messages. There you should find your email file to delete.

I hope this helps,
GerryP