Apple Mail problems

[KiaKat]

Couple of problems going on here. I've already verified disk & permissions, everything is kosher. Avast says no viruses. No malware, that I can find. I keep this system pretty tightly controlled, especially since it's a multi-user system.

1. Mail inbox disappears: Occasionally, when the inbox is closed (via the "x" on the top left), the system still reads it as being open, and won't re-open it. Reproduceable, but doesn't happen every single time.

2. Mail application refuses to close: Only way to close it is via "force quit" as neither the menu option, keyboard command, or ctrl-click + select "Quit" will close the application.

I've exhausted all my resources at this point, and it's persisting. Ideas? Are they related? Are they two separate issues that need to be dealt with separately?

[Chromatix]

This can be a disk permissions or corruption problem. I assume you know about Disk Utility?

[EvilEmpryss]

And after you run Disk Utilities you'll want to make sure you've got all your software updates.

[KiaKat]

This can be a disk permissions or corruption problem. I assume you know about Disk Utility?

See first line of my post. That was the second thing I did, after re-starting the system. I run disk utility once every month as a just-in-case.

And after you run Disk Utilities you'll want to make sure you've got all your software updates.

Hah. Software updates. You're funny.

I've been trying to get Boss to buy 10.6 for us for about a year now. Pretty much everything in-system is as updated as it'll get without that basic upgrade.

I restarted the system again, now the inbox issues are gone, but still having trouble with the not-quitting thing.

[EvilEmpryss]

What version of OS X are you using? It seems that this is a known problem in the earlier versions (10.2-10.4) (just Google "apple mail won't close").

The problem may be a corrupted file and it looks like one solution is to rebuild your mailbox.

Go to Mailbox (one at a time if you have more than one) -> Mailbox menu -> Rebuild

Another solution was more complicated:
- Backup the Mail folder inside the library (I just duplicated it)
- Make sure the Mail.app is shut down
- Inside the Mail folder, while leaving the subfolders alone, simply delete the files ("AvailableFeeds", "BackupTOC.plist", "SmartMailboxes.plist" etc.)
- Start Mail.app, it will prompt you to import all the mail, so let it do it
- You will have to redo some settings, but all the POP3 and SMTP detals remain intact.
As a note: Don't touch the "com.apple.mail.plist" file.

I've never done any of these personally (I don't use Apple's mail program), so I can't vouch for them, but they seemed to have a lot of "worked for me, too!" replies. YMMV.

[KiaKat]

Generally a lot of those issues seem to be related to upgrading the OS from the older version to 10.5 or newer. I tried the fix, but wasn't able to complete it due to a library file not re-appearing where it should.

I haven't had any trouble today, but this still concerns me. I may push for an OS upgrade soon.