OSX Mail.app quitting without crash error
Published by on January 15th, 2006 2 Comments »
I have been fighting with OS X Mail for much of today: for no apparent reason it kept crashing when just after starting and while trying to access some remote mail servers (both POP and IMAP).
Nothing useful appeared in Console to explain the crash, but I was able to prevent it happening by switching off Airport connectivity on my Powerbook (not much use when I need to check email!).
Eventually, while going through each of my mailboxes to try to spot anything out of the ordinary before resorting to the assumption of a corrupt Mbox file (Oh, the horror!), I discovered my most commonly used Smart Mailbox, called RECENT (a list of emails received within the past 3 days), was empty.
Somehow, the Smart Mailbox settings had corrupted and acquired three additional rows with improper values (see image). The settings should only have 5 conditions for the Date Received and the four Mailbox filters, but three additional ones had appeared, each incomplete with empty values. This it seems, was giving Mail problems and since deleting those additional incomplete conditions, all seems to be working well.
If you have unexplained crashing in Mail, before you trash your mailboxes fearing they are corrupt, check your Smart Folders.
Technorati Tags: apple, mail, OSX
2 Responses to “OSX Mail.app quitting without crash error”
*Phwew!* Glad I usually wear plastic tongue jewellery! (The belly button could pose a risk…)
I suppose there’s no reason for me to be alarmed though. Last I knew, we didn’t have the budget for you to obtain such a large magnet plaything…
[...] p crashes due to a corrupted smart mailbox
Neil Dixon at a minor technicality discovered that his Mail.app was crashing because one of his s [...]
[...] Dixon at a minor technicality discovered that his Mail.app was crashing because one of his smart mailboxes became [...]