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You are here: Home / Mac / Mail Keeps Crashing on macOS High Sierra, How-To Fix

Mail Keeps Crashing on macOS High Sierra, How-To Fix

By SK 72 comments Last updated February 26, 2019

Are you having Mail issues on your Mac or MacBook? Or is your Apple Mail keeps quitting unexpectedly? Are you finding your Mail slow or noticing that it won’t open at all when you click on the app?

If so, you are not alone. Many folks also report that Mail keeps crashing on macOS High Sierra Apple on startup.

Mail App Keeps Crashing With El Capitan, How-To

macOS High Sierra has been out for quite some time now. Unfortunately, a few of our readers report that their Mail keeps crashing on macOS High Sierra after their initial upgrade and even on subsequent minor High Sierra macOS updates.

For that reason, we put together a few tips that should help you fix this particular issue as well as some other common Mac Mail problems.

If you updated to macOS Mojave and are having mail problems, please see this article on Mail App Problems After Upgrading to macOS Mojave.

Quick Tips 

Follow These Quick Tips To Help Get Your Mail App Working Again In macOS High Sierra

  • Reset NVRAM
  • Remove (or isolate) some mail preference files from your User Library: com.apple.mail-shared.plist and com.apple.mail.plist
  • Delete (or isolate) a few Mail Data files: Envelope Index, Envelope Index-shm, and Envelope Index-wal
  • Right-click Finder and choose Go to folder. Then type in ~/Library/Mail/V5 (or V6/V4) and delete that folder or move to your desktop

Related Articles

  • Mail Not Working After macOS Mojave Update? Fix it today
  • How To Show Your User Library in macOS Mojave, High Sierra, and Sierra
  • macOS Could Not Be Installed, How-To Fix
  • High Sierra Needs to Repair Your Library, How-To Fix
  • Mail App Always Downloading on Mac? How-To Fix
  • Mail App Crashing With El Capitan? Fix it today
  • Understanding macOS Utilities – A Primer
  • Common Troubleshooting Issues with macOS Sierra

Start With a Reset of Your NVRAM (PRAM)

For most problems with your macOS following an upgrade, start with the PRAM Reset on your Mac before proceeding further.

And of course, make sure to backup via Time Machine or your backup method before troubleshooting the issues. 

Resetting your Mac’s NVRAM or PRAM often some of your system settings and preferences–things like speaker volume, display resolution, and startup disk preferences may need to be updated.

How-To Reset NVRAM

  1. Choose Apple Menu > Shut Down
  2. Power up your Mac
  3. Immediately press these keys at the same time: Option, Command, P, and R and maintain this hold as your Mac boots
    1. You must press the keys before the black screen with the Apple logo appears
  4. Continue pressing the keys until your Mac restarts, around 15 seconds
  5. Release the keys

Fixes For When Mail Keeps Crashing on macOS High Sierra

When an Application such as Mail crashes on your MacBook, the chances are that there is something wrong with the preference list files (called .plist files) of the application. This situation is true with all Mac Apps.

For most problems, we try to locate the ‘PLIST’ files and delete them to see if it fixes your issue.

In the case of the Mail app, ‘Envelope’ files are another set of files that sometimes need refreshing to resolve the crashing issue.

Please follow each of the steps below and remember to restart your MacBook

Remove Your Mail App Preference Files

  1. If you have an instance of the Mail app running on your macOS High Sierra, exit out it. If the app is unresponsive or frozen, force-quit the app
  2. The next step is to address the Mail app’s preference files and remove them in the case they are corrupted and are causing these issues
  3. Using your Finder app, choose Go and ‘Go to Folder…’ and type in the path as shown here and below in the image: ~/Library/PreferencesMail Keeps Crashing after macOS Upgrade, How-To Fix
  4. Locate these two files: com.apple.mail.plist and com.apple.mail-shared.plist
    1. If you can’t locate these files, make sure you are looking at your User Library, not the Main Directory Library
  5. Delete the two plist files by moving them to trash
    1. If you don’t want to delete these files, move them to your desktop to isolate them
  6. Restart Your MacBook and then launch Mail and see if the issue has resolved
    1. If the problem is gone, go ahead and delete any files you isolated to the desktop

If your issue remains, let’s also remove the envelope files

  • Quit the Mail App or force-quit if necessary
  • Remove the .plist files again following step listed above
  • Open another session using your Finder app and click on ‘GO’ at the top menu and choose ‘Go To Folder..’ from the drop-down.
  • Type in the directory path: ~/Library/Mail/V5/MailData (also shown in the image below) to locate the Mail files that need cleaning. If using later or earlier versions that V5 might be listed as V6 and above or V4 and belowMail Keeps Crashing on macOS High Sierra
  • Remove all the files that have ‘Envelope’ in them as shown in the picture below.
    • If you don’t want to delete these files, move them to your desktop to isolate themMail Slow or Crashing in macOS High Sierra, How-To Fix
  • Restart Your MacBook and then launch Mail and see if the issue is gone
    • If the problem is gone, go ahead and delete any files you isolated to the desktop

Mail App won’t open on macOS High Sierra. Shows error message

After the macOS High Sierra update, some users saw the error “unable to verify account name or password.” when trying to launch the Mail app.

Here is a reader’s suggestion that shows a way of fixing this issue on your MacBook

  1. Use Finder to locate Mail in your Mac’s Applications Folder
  2. Click on the Mail App to open it.  When this reader did this, the mail opened and everything was OKMail Doesn't Open in High Sierra, How-To Fix
  3. Drag Mail’s icon from the Applications Folder to your desktop
  4. Remove the existing Mail icon in your Mac’s Dock and drag to the Trash
  5. Now, Take that Mail App icon from your Desktop and pull it into your Dock
  6. Restart your MacBook
  7. Try Launching Mail by clicking on the new Mail icon from your Mac’s Dock

Mail App is Very Slow after the macOS Upgrade

If you are experiencing performance issues with Mail which would mean that your Mail actions are slow or trying to search for a particular mail takes a lot of time, you should consider Rebuilding the Mailbox to fix the slow mail issues. Once you rebuild the Mailbox, follow it with a reindex procedure to speed things up. These two actions go a long way in addressing performance issues with the Mail app on macOS.

We hope that you found this Mail troubleshooting article helpful. Here are some Mail tips from Apple that are helpful.

Please let us know in the comments below if you have any questions.

sudz - apple
SK

Obsessed with tech since the early arrival of A/UX on Apple, Sudz (SK) is responsible for the original editorial direction of AppleToolBox. He is based out of Los Angeles, CA.

Sudz specializes in covering all things macOS, having reviewed dozens of OS X and macOS developments over the years.

In a former life, Sudz worked helping Fortune 100 companies with their technology and business transformation aspirations.

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Reader Interactions

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Show 72 Comments

  1. Peter Uetz says

    May 8, 2021 at 9:18 AM

    None of the above worked for me yet, although it was interesting to see that removal of the envelope files made Mail to restart from scratch and importing ~380,000 messages.

    The Mail problem only popped up only a few days ago after using Mail for many years, but in conjunction with another problem which caused ALL files on my Mac NOT to open. The error message said something like “File cannot be opened because it is damaged or incomplete” (for all files I checked). I finally fixed that deleting a bunch of obscure library files (in folders called “O”, “C”, and “T”), which fixed the problem, but the Mail problem remained.

    Macbook Pro late 2017
    MacOS High Sierra (v10.13.6)
    Mail v11.5

    Reply
    • Roger Meier says

      May 25, 2021 at 2:51 PM

      Similar here. Mail has been working for years.
      About 3 months ago it started to keep crashing upon startup.
      I tried to re-build the index etc several times, even brought it to a professional.
      It still keeps crashing.
      I now have to work with the web based version which is a pain in the arse.
      I guess Apple just wants me to upgrade my 2011 Macbook Pro, but interesting that you have it in a 2017 version as well.
      Should be easy enough to re-download Apple Mail and install it in a new partition of the HD, but can’t see any way how to do that grrrr

      Reply
  2. Brian Katz says

    November 17, 2020 at 4:28 PM

    Solved my problem on 2009 Mac Pro running El Capitan. Thanks!!

    Reply
  3. FJ Lewis says

    October 19, 2020 at 9:35 AM

    SK and other readers:
    This is a follow-up to the comment I posted on October 7, 2020. I have been paying closer attention to which specific actions cause the Mail app to crash on my MacBook Air (running OS X 10.12 / Sierra).

    The app consistently crashes when I delete the messages in the “Junk” mail folder. This even happens when I perform the delete action from a mobile device; that is, if I have the Mail app running on the Mac, then trash junk mail items on my iPhone, the Mac Mail app crashes. Seems to indicate this definitely an iCloud syncing issue that manifested in a recent iOS update.

    I may contact Apple Support on this issue, but I doubt there will be a fix/solution forthcoming.

    Reply
  4. FJ Lewis says

    October 7, 2020 at 2:33 PM

    SK,

    Thanks for this detailed post. For the record, I am running OS X 12 (Sierra), and I only recently (within the past two months) began experiencing Mail app crashes under this OS version on my 2011 MacBook Air.

    I systematically applied each recommended “fix,” but the app still crashes sporadically, so the root cause remains a mystery. I’m thinking perhaps the issue is rooted in iCloud syncing across my other devices, since I have not updated any software on the MacBook Air, but have updated iOS on phone and iPad. This stuff gets more complicated with every update.

    For sake of sharing with other readers having the issue, here’s a complete list of remedies I have applied, in the order listed:
    1. Reset PRAM
    2. Removed Preferences (plist) files
    3. Removed Envelope files
    4. Individually rebuilt my Mail folders
    5. Deleted and re-created all my “external” (Gmail) account connections I the Mail app.

    Reply
  5. Brian Whiteside says

    August 17, 2020 at 1:37 AM

    I had the “mail quit unexpectedly” problem for ages on a late 2011 MacBook pro. Apple expressed no interest in helping . I tried all of the above fixes and more on other websites. I even did a complete re-install of High Sierra, but the problem persisted. What actually fixed it for me was using the facility in Mail to rebuild the database. I did that for each database, including sent, trash etc. And the problem disappeared! Much simpler than all of the previous methods – and successful.

    Reply
    • Debbie says

      August 21, 2020 at 11:21 AM

      Brian, I have a 17″ MacBook Pro early 2011 that is a fabulous laptop and I do not want to have to get rid of it. I had no luck with Apple also. This mail quit unexpectedly problem just started about 1 month ago after an upgrade. Can you tell me how you performed this function on your system so I can see if it will fix mine? I appreciate your assistance.

      Reply
  6. John Prewitt says

    August 12, 2020 at 3:52 PM

    I had this problem for months and had dozen of crashes and traced it to a mismatch in the number of Trash emails in my iPhone, iPad and MBP. The preference on my MBP (running High Sierra) had emails being erased after one week. I couldn’t find out how to set my iPhone and iPad to erase the Trash emails. I set the MBP to erase after Mail quits. That took care of the MBP and iPhone but the iPad had emails going back 10 years. I tried quitting Mail on the iPad but that didn’t help. I trashed an email on the iPad and it finally erased the email messages. I hope this fixes the crashes.

    Reply
  7. Stuart Adam says

    August 11, 2020 at 2:44 PM

    I’ve tried removing the com.apple.mail.plist and com.apple.mail-shared.plist files and the envelope files as suggested. Doesn’t help. Come on Apple. Lift your game.

    Reply
  8. Nabeel Durrani says

    June 24, 2020 at 5:56 PM

    deleting the mail envelope fixed the problem

    Reply
  9. William Enright says

    June 7, 2020 at 10:45 AM

    TRIED ALL THESE SUGGESTIONS. NONE WORKED. STILL CRASHES IMMEDIATELY AFTER OPENING.

    Reply
  10. Sharon says

    April 25, 2020 at 12:18 PM

    My Mail app kept crashing–reverting to older emails with new ones disappearing from the Inbox–so I would have to Force Quit, then restart Mail and what for the email to reload.

    So I tried following the steps above to delete the Mail app preference files (didn’t solve the problem), and then to delete the envelope files.

    As a result of the latter step, at least six months of email disappeared–even from All Mail–but mail from the current month is still in my Inbox.

    Any way to retrieve the email I lost?

    Reply
    • Elizabeth Jones says

      April 26, 2020 at 10:35 AM

      Hi Sharon,

      Try rebuilding your Mailboxes.

      In the Mail app on your Mac, select a mailbox in the sidebar–this can be your Inbox or if your Inbox contains multiple email accounts (an arrow next to the Inbox), we suggest you perform a rebuild on each account’s Inbox rather than the entire Inbox at once.

      Once you select a mailbox, from the top menu choose Mailbox > Rebuild

      When you rebuild mailboxes for IMAP or Exchange accounts, macOS removes all the messages and attachments currently stored on your computer and then downloads and syncs to that email again from your mail server to your Mac.

      As it rebuilds, your mailbox may look like it is empty–wait for the download to complete.

      Reply
  11. hgabor84 says

    March 21, 2020 at 7:31 AM

    Hi! Is there anyone here who did reinstall the whole operating system – High Sierra – and after crashing reappeared?

    Reply
  12. Jim says

    March 6, 2020 at 8:30 PM

    I tried these steps, however, apple mail continues to crash when I try to delete email from the app’s trash folder.

    Reply
  13. Hugo says

    January 7, 2020 at 3:28 AM

    Thank you
    Found that app will be setup from scratch but error is gone.

    Reply
  14. yunus says

    December 27, 2019 at 3:17 AM

    many thanks, it worked.

    Reply
  15. chris wallace says

    October 1, 2019 at 7:41 AM

    FIX UPDATE:

    I have had this issue occur every year for the past 5 years!

    I have followed loads of different suggestions including the deleting/moving files.

    The issue always relates back to my Exchange accounts. The only fix I have found, albeit temporary until it occurs again (normally 6 months – 1year), is to do the following:

    Delete all Exchange accounts and add them from scratch again.

    Reply
  16. Jane says

    September 15, 2019 at 4:40 AM

    I have been working with Apple Senior Advisors for two weeks to try to fix this problem of crashing mail.

    Invested hours in removing items, restarts, etc.

    After the most recent 2.5 hours (yesterday), my mail is crashing more regularly and I’ve just discovered that in reloading my iCloud files of 10+ years of email history with clients, committees, family and health providers – all the dates on those emails have been changed to 9/7/2019 — perhaps this seems insignificant to Apple, but to lose this ready access to the history of these contacts is unthinkable – and yet it has happened.

    (perhaps there is a way to recover this – I’ll see in my next call to Apple).

    The Apple people I’ve worked with have confirmed that this crashing is a result of the upgrade to Sierra and High Sierra — and clearly, Apple engineers have not yet figured out to fix it – or if they have, the word has not gotten out to the advisors trying to effectively help people like me.

    I made the switch to Apple back in the mid-1990’s because of the unreliability of upgrades with Microsoft — and now this is the experience with Apple. And, what’s of real concern, is Apple’s inability to fix this.

    Reply
  17. Jane Snyder says

    September 11, 2019 at 9:41 AM

    Most FRUSTRATING and sets business and personal email back by days.
    Email can be read and sent and files moved but only for a short time THEN IT CRASHES.

    I have to RESTART SHUT down the computer and try FORCE QUIT and THAT DOES NOT WORK so I have to shut it down with the on/off switch .

    Restart computer

    then RESTART it a 2nd time IN ORDER TO GET MAIL TO WORK…… but then! It only works for a SHORT time before the process begins again.
    Wasting TOO MUCH TIME doing this.
    PLEASE FIX THIS APPLE

    Reply
  18. ahmad says

    August 14, 2019 at 3:47 AM

    Thanks!! Removing mail preference and envelope files worked!!

    Reply
  19. Sarah says

    August 2, 2019 at 11:33 PM

    Thanks!! Removing mail preference and envelope files worked!!

    Reply
  20. Peter Harris says

    July 28, 2019 at 12:15 PM

    I have been through all the steps listed above to try to cure my Mail program quitting constantly but to no avail. I am running v 10.13.6 on a Macbook Pro 13 inch 2017, 3.5 GHz Intel core i7. 16GB 2133 Mhz LPDDR3. Serial No C02V32FLHV2Q.

    I am now unable to use Mail on this computer. This is unacceptable.

    APPLE, PLEASE PROVIDE A FIX.

    Reply
  21. john says

    July 24, 2019 at 2:42 AM

    Thanks a million – the ‘Remove Your Mail App Preference Files’ works a treat!

    Reply
  22. Nick Maync says

    June 28, 2019 at 4:45 PM

    None of these methods are working now.

    Removing envelopes, and then mailbox content itself from library enabled restart but mail is lost!

    This time round crash throughout, no fix, apparently in High Sierra.

    Consider downgrading now.

    Can’t tell you how annoying it is in this time-saving age to spend days and hours fixing these f…Apple problems.

    Reply
  23. Karl Jolley says

    February 26, 2019 at 3:57 PM

    in os drive = folders; applications, library, system, users
    in library is no folder for ‘Mail”
    in system/ library is no folder for ‘Mail”
    in users / there is no library at all
    in preferences it goes to logging and subsystems to see any plist files.
    running 10.13.6 for several weeks, all is fine. sent a mail, began to send another and Mail quits.
    ?? there is no Mail folder to be found, cant remove anything from it. where is my user library? not visible?
    Now IF I disconnect Then Mail will stay open, I can read all new mail, and the mail I was trying to send is there in the outbox.
    what is more nuts is when Mail first quit, I rebooted to my backup which is a clone, mail worked fine until I tried to send that same email.

    Reply
    • SK says

      February 26, 2019 at 6:02 PM

      Hi Karl,

      It sounds like there is something in that email you are trying to send that is corrupt or causing problems. If possible, delete it and re-create it and see if the problem resolves.

      Check out this article to locate your user library on macOS (all versions.)

      Reply
      • Karl Jolley says

        February 26, 2019 at 8:37 PM

        Thank you so much for that.

        Now have access to User Lib again…

        — the email is my standard text written in Pages and copy pasted to email, the one before that had PDFs and png.s in it and that went no prob.

        — does seem to be more than a coincidence though that the attempt to send that email crashed Mail on two different system drives.

        well, thanks to Apple ToolBox I have “a fighting chance” to get things right again.

        Reply
      • Karl Jolley says

        February 27, 2019 at 4:45 PM

        just an update to hopefully help someone else with a similar issue.
        apparently, there was something in the Pages formatting that Mail didn’t like. copy from Pages and paste to Mail, mail quit.
        I go offline, open Mail, delete the email — still in ‘Outbox”
        go online and open Mail all is as it should be.

        I rewrote the email directly in Mail, sent with no problem.
        I have the full Mail detailed view and can not see any reason for the rejection, but I haven’t done a side by side comparison of that one and another.

        Reply
        • SK says

          February 27, 2019 at 6:55 PM

          Thank you Karl. This is a good tip that we didn’t think about.

          Reply
  24. Li says

    February 8, 2019 at 5:36 AM

    Here’s my case:

    Apple Mail crashes after upgrading to Sierra or High Sierra.

    (1) Go offline.
    (2) Open Mail, without crash.
    (3) Disable all Exchange accounts (not the hotmail.com accounts as IMAP).
    (4) Go online. Mail doesn’t crash.
    (5) Mail-Preference-Accounts, re-enter password for the Exchange accounts, enable.

    No more crash.

    Reply
  25. JDFloyd says

    February 6, 2019 at 5:15 PM

    My MAIL.APP on my iMAC is “not responding” and will not “Force Quit” no matter how many times I try.

    Reply
    • SK says

      February 7, 2019 at 10:19 AM

      Hi JD,

      Open your activity monitor and quit the Mail App from there. Take a look at this article for step-by-step details–it’s for macOS Mojave but ideas are the same!

      Reply
  26. kristin says

    January 16, 2019 at 4:51 PM

    Hey, so I deleted the envelopes and it fixed my problem…but now the majority of my contacts have been deleted! What is the fix to that?

    Reply
  27. Chris says

    January 15, 2019 at 1:20 PM

    I’ve got High Sierra 10.13.6 and suddenly the mail program started to crash and report an error message to apple.

    I did all above but nothing helped and removed also all internet accounts in system preferences. Still crashing.

    Changed to Outlook and all worked fine.

    So the only thing left was to delete all accounts in ~/Library/Mail/V5. And look at it: it works fine again!

    Somehow the iCloud mail account in ~/Library/Mail/V5 was damaged.

    Reply
  28. Scott says

    November 25, 2018 at 3:06 PM

    My wife’s Macbook mail program was crashing and unusable. After trying the solutions here and other places she took it to the Apple Store. The tech had to upload stuff to Apple to figure out the problem. Her user name on the computer was corrupted! He created a new ID for her, reloaded the OS and she was good to go. I hope this helps some of you. This seems to be an issue with no single answer.

    Reply
    • SK says

      November 25, 2018 at 3:53 PM

      Thanks Scott. Corrupted User Accounts can definitely be an issue that can lead to this. If anyone else out there has exhausted all his/her options, you may want to check out this detailed guide on fixing corrupt user accounts.

      Reply
  29. Jean E says

    October 3, 2018 at 2:27 AM

    I’m using High Sierra 10.13.6. And suddenly,just a couple of days ago, I can neither send nor receive in my IMAP accounts. Yep, Gmail forwarding works fine in Mail, but not my IMAP accounts. And my partner’s old imac running good old 10.6.8 still, continues to work happily with mail and the same host server.

    I am SOOOOO frustrated! As well as following the advice to remove Prefs, folders, reset the NVRAM, etc etc. , I’ve spent HOURS trying to resolve this problem with my host, trying to reset all and any of the Mail Settings. Then I tried in 2 other email apps for mac (Postbox, and Airmail 3) and get- THE SAME RESULT.
    So, along with the fact that Mail works still in OS 10.6.8, that proves that it’s definitely High Sierra causing the problem — not my host server, not my lovely imac.

    WHEN are they going to fix this problem???

    Reply
    • SK says

      October 3, 2018 at 12:12 PM

      Jean, What happens when you use the ‘Connection Doctor’ feature on Mail. With Mail open, Click on ‘Window’ at the top and choose Connection Doctor. Where does the error happen?

      Reply
  30. Ernesto T says

    October 1, 2018 at 2:17 PM

    Hi everybody, I have a problem with the SIZE of Mail folders. It went crazy from Sierra to High Sierra. It basically doubled its size. It’s done it again with Mojave; it doubled again. I’m trying to hunt if in ~Library/Mail/ I can find where the duplicates are but can’t risk erasing something valuable. There are however folders named “Data” and “Data_Rebuild” in some mboxes…

    Any suggestions?

    Reply
  31. Leonard Berkowitz says

    September 20, 2018 at 1:57 PM

    I am having mail problems – very slow to receive and to open aftyer receipt; also very slow to send. I cannot find apple.mail.plist in my preferences!!

    Reply
    • SK says

      September 20, 2018 at 3:11 PM

      HI Leonard.

      Check that you are looking inside your User Library and Not the Main Library Directory. That’s a common mistake.

      Go to Finder and select Home

      Select the Library folder.

      Then go to Preferences folder and locate the file com.apple.Mail.plist

      Move the file to your desktop.

      Restart the computer, open the Mail app, and test.

      If it works okay, delete that plist

      Sam

      Reply
  32. Troy says

    September 20, 2018 at 8:35 AM

    My mail is crashing now on all my computers…nothing is working??

    Reply
    • SK says

      September 20, 2018 at 10:10 AM

      Hi Troy,

      Instead of launching Mail from your Dock or Launchpad, try opening Mail from the Applications folder.

      Or use Spotlight Search and typing Mail and see if it launches.

      If that doesn’t work, try opening Mail with the shift key held down. This causes Mail to open without any message or mailbox selected.

      If that’s still not working, you could reinstall macOS by using Recovery Mode (Press Command + R at startup.) If you go this route, make sure you backup your Mac first.

      If you don’t want to go this way, reach out to Apple Support or consider leaving feedback

      We particularly like the chat option with Apple Support–it’s usually less wait time than other methods.

      This problem is unfortunately not new! It seems to plague Macs every now and again.

      Reply
  33. Ale says

    September 15, 2018 at 5:46 AM

    Hi,
    My mail app just crashes down every time i open it, i tried reseting the NVRAM, nothing changed then i tried to look for the files in order to delete but i don´t have them! Any suggestions what i can do next!
    Thanks

    Reply
    • SK says

      September 15, 2018 at 9:24 AM

      Hi Ale,

      Try launching in Safe Mode and see if it detects anything. To get into Safe Mode, restart your Mac while holding down the Shift Key. Once in Safe Mode, test things out to see if the problem remains or if it’s gone.

      If gone, there’s a third party extension getting in the way.

      Another option is to reinstall macOS, but make sure you backup first.

      Reinstall macOS by restarting from the Recovery Mode. At the restart, hold both the Command and R keys. When the Utility Menu appears select Reinstall then click on the Continue button.

      Sam

      Reply
  34. Saurabh Mishra says

    August 29, 2018 at 7:32 PM

    Hi,
    I was facing this problem will Mail quitting on Startup. Tried deleting the Mail plist files, no luck. Then when I deleted the Envelope files, it worked like a charm. Thank you so much and keep up the good work.
    Regards,
    Saurabh

    Reply
  35. Nick Landauer says

    August 8, 2018 at 2:02 AM

    Still won’t recognise accounts/passwords in mail after high sierra upgrade. Grrrrrrrrr.

    Reply
  36. sun says

    July 24, 2018 at 8:11 PM

    I upgraded my iMac and MacBook Pro to High Sierra 10.13.6.
    My main issue is the mail app.
    I can open the mail and read the message.
    But I cannot get new messages during the mail app opens.
    In order to get new messages, I should quit the mail app and reopen it.
    (I can check new messages in my mobile.)
    So I did all things according to your suggestions for mail.
    But it does not work.
    Also I tried to delete all files in ~/Library/Mail/, but it does not work.
    Please help me~

    Reply
    • SK says

      July 25, 2018 at 12:32 PM

      Hi Sun,

      Try running connection doctor and see if there are any issues noted.

      How To Run Connection Doctor

        Select Connection Doctor from the Window menu of the Mail App
        Connection Doctor starts checking and displays its results for each of your accounts. It looks to see if your account can receive mail and then checks if it can send mail
        Any account marked in red has a connection issue. If an issue is detected, Connection Doctor shows a summary of the issue
        To find out more about the issue, press Show Detail and then Show Logs to have Connection Doctor display the log of each connection

      Sam

      Reply
      • sun says

        August 3, 2018 at 12:37 AM

        Thank you for your comments.
        But there is no any mail issue even though I run the connection doctor.
        Please help me~

        Reply
  37. loosedrag says

    July 24, 2018 at 11:22 AM

    I just dropped High Sierra on my box and mail crashed after uploading crazy amounts of “drafts”.

    May be unrelated to the problem, but the same email addresses had not been saving drafts on Mac before…

    Anyhoo, tried deleting plists and envelope packets to no avail, but…the “start mail from the finder” rather than using Lunchpad did the trick immediately. Many thanks!

    Reply
  38. Jaime says

    July 7, 2018 at 7:59 PM

    I try to launch my email application and I get the same 2 responses. The first says The application mail is not open anymore. Well, duh, how do I open it? The second says You can’t open the application “mail” because it’s not responding. How do I get it to respond? I had to force quit it because it wouldn’t open any emails or delete any either. It was like in a loop or something so after I force quit it, nothing. This is very aggravating, and since this is my first Mac, I’m at a loss on what to do. Any tips would be appreciated. Thanks.

    Reply
    • SK says

      July 16, 2018 at 8:02 AM

      Jamie, Please try deleting the Mail .plist files and then restart as highlighted in the article. You won’t need to open Mail to do it. Instead you will use Finder to locate your user library and delete the files. Let us know if that helps.

      Reply
  39. Vicki says

    June 12, 2018 at 1:08 PM

    I updated my computer to High Sierra 10.13.5. Immediately after the update, mail started asking for passwords for my email accounts. I entered the correct passwords. I know that for sure. I continue to get the message that the password is invalid. I go to Accounts and Preferences and try to enter the passwords there (more than one account). It gives the error “Unable to store credential due to error -25308 Requested By: Mail”. Not sure if it matters, but all 3 emails I have are through Godaddy.

    I did all of the steps you mentioned above and everything is still the same. I still get the error messages and cannot retrieve email in the Mail program any longer. I have to use webmail now.

    Reply
    • SK says

      June 13, 2018 at 7:15 AM

      Vicki, I have never seen this error before. Two suggestions. Have you tried to delete the email account from your MacBook and add it back again? The other suggestion would be to reset your keychain on your Mac. Wondering if the keychain is unable to store/retrieve the credentials.

      Reply
    • MARTINN says

      June 25, 2018 at 10:29 AM

      mine did the exact same thing.. did you figure out whats wrong.. i tired re installing my operating system and still wont work.. then when i deleted it, it wont let me add the account back, been on the phone with apple, but no help. Any suggestions??!?!

      Reply
    • martin says

      June 25, 2018 at 10:31 AM

      Mine did the exact same.. how did you guys fix this .. pls help

      Reply
  40. Naren says

    May 20, 2018 at 8:47 PM

    Great article. Solved my problem. Appreciate the help.

    Reply
  41. Jim Taylor says

    April 24, 2018 at 2:31 PM

    I skipped the PRAM reset and did the mail plist files and then the envelope plist files and it seems to have done the trick! It did need to re-import all he messages which took quite a while but completed without error. Thanks!

    Reply
    • Briarley says

      October 1, 2018 at 7:14 AM

      I have the same problem, mail keeps crashing, the screen says reopen but it doesn’t re open. I’ve had this before, and eventually it got fixed, but got it again, it cost me $40 to get fixed so I am reluctant to send my machine in – would like to try and solve it myself, how do I get to plist files to delete ? I’m not tech savvy. Thanks

      Reply
      • SK says

        October 1, 2018 at 9:03 AM

        Briarley, I think we had tried helping someone with removing plist files and posted the same in our FB page with screenshots. This should be in the visitor posts section at facebook.com/appletbox . If you still have issues, let us know and we can try sending you some more detailed screenshots.

        Reply
  42. Brian says

    April 18, 2018 at 2:23 PM

    I did the suggested deletions and then Mail said it needed to import messages when I started it up, and reported an error in this process so I could not start up. So I reversed the deletions of the envelope files, keeping the plist files deleted. It then started up OK and quickly imported the messages that it had not been importing previously, so now it seems to be functioning OK.

    Reply
    • SK says

      April 19, 2018 at 7:28 AM

      Hi Brian,

      Thanks for sharing what worked for you. Based on your experience, we’re updating the article to focus first on deleting only the plist files and then re-checking Mail. If still not working, then we recommend also deleting the envelope files.

      Thank you for your insight and for sharing! We really appreciate it.

      SK

      Reply
  43. richard kilsby says

    March 22, 2018 at 4:39 PM

    I have a screen shot of the console when mail crashed. How can I send it to you.
    Thanks

    Reply
    • SK says

      March 23, 2018 at 10:19 AM

      Rick, Please send it to [email protected] . We can take a look but your better option is to reach out to Apple Support. if we find something that can be easily identified as the issue, we will definitely send you a note. Thanks.

      Reply
  44. Brad says

    March 17, 2018 at 9:05 AM

    Thank you! This worked!

    Reply
  45. CRosengren says

    March 14, 2018 at 6:55 PM

    Just upgraded to High Sierra (10.13.3). Mail opens as expected. Abbreviated view of messages looks normal. But no content visible when I open a message. Header shows, but no content.

    It seems I will need to add RAM and convert to SSD to try and resuscitate my system, which at this point has virtually ‘no pulse’.

    Not expecting these sorts of problems – especially re: Mail – when upgrading OS.

    Reply
  46. richard kilsby says

    March 12, 2018 at 10:45 AM

    I removed the envelope and pref files as above restarted mac and reopened mail and it still quits abruptly within 20 seconds with the message. Any further fixes?

    Reply
    • SK says

      March 12, 2018 at 2:28 PM

      Rick, Thanks for the update. Usually those two steps pretty much take care of the crashing issue. What error messages if any do you see in the console as soon as the app quits. Go to Finder > Utilities > Console and start it up. See if you can find anything obvious there when the app crashes. You can also use the search box on the top right corner and look for mail. Keep us posted. In the mean while, we will also check and see if we can find any other tips.

      Reply
  47. Tiberman says

    February 26, 2018 at 9:01 AM

    URGENT. My mail won’t open. Tried opening my mail from the applications. It still. won’t open. What do I do Please?

    Reply
    • SK says

      February 26, 2018 at 9:19 AM

      Hi Tiberman,

      Sorry to hear about your problems with the Mail App in High Sierra. If you haven’t already restarted your Mac, go ahead and try that and see if it remedies the situation with the Mail App. If you already did that, let’s try the following:

        Open System Preferences > Internet Accounts
        Click on all your mail accounts and toggle off Mail
        Wait 20-30 seconds
        Turn Mail back on again
        Try and open the Mail App

      If that doesn’t do the trick, consider reinstalling macOS High Sierra or updating to the latest version, if available. Make sure you backup your data first before reinstalling or updating your macOS.

      Once backed up, restart in macOS Recovery Mode by pressing Command+R at startup. Then select reinstall macOS from the on-screen options.

      SK

      Reply

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