Mail problem.

[Lufbrarunner]

I recently noticed that on my iMac if I go to Mail>preferences. I get a blank message box. As below.

However on my MacBookPro I get the proper response.

Both machine are High Sierra (10.13.3) and both are running mail 11.2
Anyone have any ideas on a cause or a solution?

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Do you have Mail running all the time? I'd quit it or even restart my Mac.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

I have tried that, with no joy. I will try to start in safe mode to see if that helps.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

Saw a similar problem on Apple support pages, with this as the solution.

Go to ~/User/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/
Select all three items in this folder: Data, New . . . , Container.plist
With 3 items selected, Right Click. Choose Create New Folder from Selections (3)
Reboot.

Sorted

 

[honestone]

Cool! It is somewhat "disturbing", though, that a number of folks have various issues with Apple's Mail program. I use Outlook 2016 (and Outlook 2011 before that), and I have never had any issues with either of them. And I also have the software installed on both of my Macs.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

It looks like there was a corrupted file in the com.apple.mail folder. I do have outlook 2016 on the iMac and the MBP, but mail had been working fine till now. I will monitor the situation for a while then if it re-occurs I may switch to Outlook.

 

[honestone]

Understand. But it's disturbing to see so many folks have so many varied problems with Apple's Mail program, but I rarely (if ever) see any reports of issues with Outlook 2016 (or Thunderbird for that matter, although I don't know how many folks "around here" use it). Also, I always quit ANY program I use when I am done.

Of course, I make a concerted effort to always keep up with updates for any of the software I use. I have made posts whenever a new update for Office 2016 comes out (or like recently, when there were updates for only Word 2016, Excel 2016, and PowerPoint 2016). I really wonder if such information is helpful, and that folks are applying such updates (when applicable of course).

Oh, and the other thing I consistently do is to have any unneeded deleted EMails permanently removed, so as to not clutter up Outlook 2016's database. (In actuality, just about every EMail I delete gets permanently removed). Again, I want to keep my Macs "lean, mean, and clean".

 

[Lufbrarunner]

I always keep my software up to date, I sometimes hold off if there is a problem reported and wait till a fix comes around. To be fair to mail this is the first problem I have had and I may not have noticed it if I had not needed to look at the preferences.

 

[honestone]

That's good that keep up to date with your software. And while it is OK that this is the first time you have had issues with Apple's Mail program, I have seen so many posts here by numerous folks who have had various issues with the program.