Mail repeatedly crashes and will not open

[eclipse]

Hi all,
it's been a few days now and I'm starting to panic.
Mail just will not open. It boots, pauses, then the wheel starts spinning and it crashes.

I'm using an iMac 2011 and 10.12.5.

Thanks for any help

 

[Taz Mangus]

Create a new user account and try mail from there.

 

[dianeoforegon]

I'm assuming you have IMAP accounts.

Quit Mail
Go to your User's Library
Scroll down to Containers
Delete com.apple.mail
Scroll to Mail
Rename MailXXX

Go to System Preferences > Internet Accounts
Uncheck Mail for all but one email account.
Open Mail
Under Window in the Menu bar > Connection Doctor. Do you see two green symbols for the account?
If red, you most likely need to add password under the server settings tab for the account.
In the main Mail window, select to show Mailbox list.
If the account is OK, then add other accounts one by one verifying they are connecting correctly.

If you stored any data under the local "On My Mac" folders these can be imported.

 

[eclipse]

Thanks for that, and it appears to be working. But how do I reimport all my old mailboxes and emails? I assume they're all in the mailxxx folder? Can I just click "Import" on mailxxx?

Also, there seem to be a variety of formats and folders that old emails are stored in eg V2, V3, V4....
https://www.lifewire.com/g00/find-and-open-stored-attachments-1172808?i10c.referrer=https://www.google.com.au/

Do I need to do anything about that? Any 'mail hygiene' or maintenance upgrading old emails to newer formats or whatever to keep them accessible?

 

[dianeoforegon]

You only want to import the local mailboxes from the last and most current version of Mail. In the past this was named Mailboxes. However if you only see alphanumberic numbering, look inside the folders for Outbox. This is the local "On My Mac" folder (Mailboxes). Select to Import from this folder.

[Note: If you had any POP accounts, you will want to import those as well. This will get the Inbox, Drafts, Sent messages. Any POP account you have added to Mail downloaded the messages from the Inbox. Your local Inbox could contain messages that were removed from the server. Your Sent and Draft messages would only be stored locally in your Pop default folders.]

V2 Names:
AosIMAP-xxx
IMAP-diane@xxx
Mailboxes
MailData

Delete all other Vx containers.

If you look in the older V folders, there should only be MailData. That does not contain any messages.

 

[eclipse]

Thanks so much for your help Diane. Lastly, I'm wondering why this happened and what sort of maintenance I need to do with mail every 6 months or year?

 

[dianeoforegon]

Other than deleting spam and other notifications, there should be no maintenance needed. It's the bloat that often causes the problem from the sheer size of the data.