Mail program shuts down

B

banjotrout

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iBook G4 running OSX 10.3 with the original Mail program installed. Operating normally, until yesterday we clicked the Mail program, it opened, then shut down almost immediately. We cannot get it to stay open long enough to even ask it to work offline.

Airport connection working normally for Safari and Firefox browsers. It's only Mail that seems to be affected. Ran the Hardware check on the installation disks, and there's no hardware malfunction.

Can we reinstall Mail program only using the OSX install disks? And if so, will it wipe out all our archived email messages in our library folders?
 
Then lets rebuild Mail, it is easy but it will blow away anything in the Inbox & erase the email server settings. So before proceeding try to right down your email server settings you can find, this is important!

Then go to the folder /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/ and find the file com.apple.mail.plist . Throw that thing into the Trash Can (but don't empty it yet). Try opening Mail now and you will have to put in the email server settings again but any saved email will still be there.

Lastly read the article A possible fix for a slow Mail app really speeds up Mail when you come across that problem.
 
banjotrout said:
... will it wipe out all our archived email messages in our library folders?
Click to expand...

If you are concerned about losing archived mail you can make a copy of the relevant folders at:

YourUserAccount ~> Library ~> Mail​

Highlight the mailbox folders you see and drag them to the Desktop as you press & hold the Option key (this copies them to the Desktop)

Then you have your important emails backed up as emix files for 'just in case'.

There are other methods such as Carbon Copy or SuperDuper or even Time Machine if you like. It's up to you.

If you ever need to import these email messages back into Mail.app, you would need to use an emix to mbox converter like this one:

emlx to mbox Converter - 1.0.3

You only need launch emix to mbox converter and then drag the emix files onto the window to convert them to mbox then launch Mail.app and in the file menu choose "Import Mailbox" and navigate to the location of the mbox and hit "import" then they are safely back in your Mail program.
 
I see two suggestions already. Thanks for the ideas. I'm traveling and don't have the G4 with me, but when I get home tomorrow night, I'll test some theories and see what I can do. I appreciate the info on backing up the library files.
 
Thanks to both Satcomer and VirtualTracy. Finally had time tonight to backup the important email folders. Had to reload Mac OS X. The mail.plist in the Preferences folder was definitely the culprit. We tried to toss that out and Mail *almost* restarted, but then it kept building a corrupted mail.plist file and would shut down. After loading Mac OS X (using the archive function--not delete!), we were able to reincorporate our backed up inbox and sent files. Thrilled. Thanks so much for the guidance!
 
Glad to have been of service ;) Thanks for posting back that all is well ... it's always good to have the feedback and you never know when someone else may come looking for answers to the exact same problem. :)
 
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