[Phil333]

All of a sudden today, with me not changing anything in my settings, Mail crashes everytime I open it. I open it, it hangs on trying to get the messages from my two IMAP servers (both of which are up, I've checked) does the beach ball and I need to force quit. It won't even give me a chance to get to my settings, it beach balls right away. I've tried restarting the computer, but to no avail. Any suggestions?

Thanks

[TETENAL]

So if I understand you correctly, it doesn't crash. It freezes.

There are some things you could try.

• Open Activity Viewer, select the hanging Mail and select View->Analyze Process. The analysis might tell you what Mail is trying to do.
• It might let you get to your settings if your computer is not connected to the Internet when you start it.
• Trashing the preferences might fix it. Of course you'd then have to re-enter your account settings.

[Phil333]

Where do I find Activity Viewer?

[TETENAL]

I'm sorry. It's called Activity Monitor. My mistake.

[voo]

I had this before with 10.4.5 or there abouts. Mail was always stuck at the spinning beachball for no reason like as you've encountered.

Search for mail plist, then move com.apple.mail.plist to your desktop. Fire up Mail, it should work quit it and put the plist back to your Username/Library/Preferences folder.

[pcd2k]

run "Cache Out X" but only select appropriate elements