Mail won't open!

As of this morning Mail on my mbp (running leopard) won't open! It begins to load but always quits "unexpectedly" and this happens each time I relaunch or reset and relaunch, even after rebooting. I've read through some old posts and this seemed to happen to a few people in Tiger but I couldn't find any firm conclusion of how to solve the problem. Has anyone else had this problem? Any suggestions as to what to try?!

 

edit**** Ok before you do anything... have you tried repairing permissions on the drive?

you can try removing the preference file.

Its stored under: "com.apple.mail.plist" in the folder "Library/Preferences" under your home folder.

It often helps with mac applications. It will remove all your settings ofcourse. But you can recover your mailbox.

 

Hey Wave, thanks for the suggestions. I've tried repairing permissions but that hasn't helped so I set about looking for the preference file but can't find it anywhere with spotlight or in the folder you mentioned. Sorry to sound such a novice at this, but why would I not have the file?! Also, if I am to reinstall mail from the leopard disk, is there any other way to save my settings from Mail so they can easily be reset?

 

To find the file you need to go to your User folder and not the system folder.

In finder it should be listed as your user name. If not go to your OS X drive and then Users and its in there. In your home directory there is a Library/Preferences folder and the file is in there. (Spotlight doesnt find it)

This file is also what you need to restore settings. However I dont think reinstalling Mail from the DVD will delete that file. All the mail is kept under: User name/Library/Mail and Mail downloads. You can make a back up by copying the contents of the folders to a save location.

 

How far is it getting into opening Mail? Is the screen coming up then crashing? I had a similar problem with Mail crashing right when it would start up and check mail.
Problem not 100% fixed either, then again... Mail never was the most stable app.

 

Hi hollownail, similar to you Mail would crash before the program would open properly, the title bar loads but before the actual app loads it crashes.

Another thanks to Wave, I found the file now and deleted it, when I next opened Mail I went through all the set up of the preferences but the the Mail app itself never loaded.

To be honest now I think I'm going to just reinstall leopard since safari is now also playing up a bit and often won't load pages properly...bit of a pain though really.