How To Fix Every Apple Mail Problem On A Mac

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There are many ways that the apple mail app could stop working on your mac. you can stop responding altogether or just stop receiving new emails. Fortunately, whatever the problem is, you just need to follow a simple set of troubleshooting steps to fix it.

keep your mac in perfect working order

It’s frustrating when any app stops working on your mac, let alone an app you use as frequently as apple mail. One of the best ways to keep your Mac running at its best is to regularly use cleanup software, like Mackeeper.

download mackeeper and run a full scan to learn about the different ways you can clean up your mac.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through all the steps you need to take to fix just about every issue you may encounter with Mac Mail App Not Working:

common mail problems
open the correct mail app
check your connections
restart the mail app
restart your mac
update macos
close your mail windows
rebuild your email accounts
reset email preferences email
add your email account again

all common problems with apple mail

When you say the apple mail app isn’t working on your mac, you’re probably referring to one of these common problems:

mail app won’t open
mail is frozen and not responding
can’t receive new emails
can’t send emails getting stuck in outbox
mail not loading your email accounts or inbox
mail search bar not working
apple keeps asking for your email passwords
mail is slow or keeps crashing and crashes
mail doesn’t show your emails

No matter what happens to the mail app on your mac, the list of troubleshooting steps below will fix it. We haven’t separated the tips for each mail problem because, to be honest, they’re pretty much all the same anyway. so start working on the list, testing the mail after each step.

1. open mail from application folder

after updating macos, the mail icon on your dock may point to an older version of the app. To fix this, all you need to do is open the mail app from the applications folder:

launch finder
select applications from the sidebar (or press cmd + shift + a )
find and double click the mail to open it
if this works, drag the mail from the finder to the dock to update the icon

2. Use Connection Doctor to check your connections

You probably already know that you need an internet connection to send and receive email, but if your mac isn’t online, you may not be able to use the mail app at all. if you haven’t already, open a web browser and load a new page to test your connection.

3. Quit or force quit the Mail app

One of the best steps you can take when any app stops working on your mac, including the mail app, is to close it and restart it. Of course, that’s easier said than done if the reason your mail stopped working is because it’s completely frozen and not responding to you.

Fortunately, you can force close an app even if it’s not responding.

To exit an app normally: click the app icon on the panel to make it your active app, then press command + q to exit
to force close an application: press option + command + escape to open the force close window, then select the corresponding application and click force close

When you quit an app properly, using one of those two methods, it will completely close the app and stop any background processes associated with it. This will give Mail a chance to restart properly the next time you open it.

4. close all applications and restart your mac

If mail still isn’t working properly or is slow, it might be due to one of the other applications running on your mac. If one of those apps is using too much processing power or ram, or has developed a bug, then mail will have a hard time running like it’s supposed to.

all you need to do to fix this is follow the steps above to quit all applications on your mac, then open the apple menu in the top left corner and select restart the mac itself.

5. Update macOS and Mail

Like the last point, what appears to be a problem with mail could actually be a problem with macos, your mac’s operating system. all you need to do in this case is update macos from system preferences.

This is also an important step because mail updates are included in macos. so if you’re running a bad version of mail, the way to fix all the bugs is to update it with macos.

open system preferences and click software update to check for new updates.

6. Merge and close windows

If mail is particularly slow, or not responding at all, you may be trying to do too much at once. this can happen if too many mail windows are open in the background. you may not even realize how many windows are open, but there’s a quick and easy fix either way.

with mail open, go to window > merge all windows from the menu bar. if this option is grayed out, continue to the next step.

When you Merge All Windows, Mail combines all your open windows, creating a separate tab for each of them. Now you can see all the windows you’ve got open, close as many of them as possible to free up some processing power and help Mail speed up again.

7. rebuild your mailboxes

If messages are missing from your mail inbox, or if the messages that appear are scrambled and out of order, you can usually fix it by rebuilding your inbox. this is a feature built into the mail app that essentially resynchronizes all the messages in your accounts.

To rebuild your mailboxes, go to mailbox > rebuild from the menu bar. It should only take a second, but it will update all the messages in your app.

8. Reset your Mail preferences

mail may not work due to an error in the file that saves all application preferences. This isn’t entirely uncommon in mac applications, but luckily it’s pretty easy to fix.

all you need to do is delete the plist file that contains your mac preferences. this causes mail to create a new plist file which will reset all preferences to their default state. you may need to tweak a few options to get it back the way you want.

to reset your mail preferences:

launch browser
from the menu bar, click go > go to folder
enter the following file path and press enter to go there: ~/library/containers/com.apple.mail/ data/library/preferences
drag the com.apple.mail.plist file to your desktop to reset your preferences
now restart your mac and try using mail again
if mail still doesn’t work, move the plist file from your desktop to the preferences folder to restore your preferences

If that didn’t work, here are some other Mail system files you can try removing:

launch browser
from the menu bar, click go > go to folder
enter the following file path and press enter to go there: ~/library/containers/com.apple.mail/ data/library/saved application state
move any folder or file from here to your desktop
now go back five levels to the containers

Move the following to your desktop folder: com.apple.mail and com.apple.mailserviceagent

now restart your mac and try using mail again

if mail still doesn’t work, move the folders and files from your desktop to the folders they came from

9. remove and re-add your email accounts

Finally, if mail still doesn’t work on your mac, you should try deleting your email accounts and adding them again from scratch. when you do this, you’ll lose any emails waiting to be sent in your outbox, so write them down first.

Before completely deleting an account, you can try disabling it:

start mail and go to mail > preferences in the menu bar

go to the accounts

tab select an email account in the sidebar, then uncheck enable this account box

repeat this for each of your connected email accounts

restart mail, then return to this page and check the boxes again

If that doesn’t work, follow these steps to completely remove and re-add email accounts:

start mail and go to mail > accounts in the menu bar

select an email account in the sidebar, then click the minus (-)

confirm that you want to delete the account; don’t worry, it will just remove it from your mac

once that’s done, click the plus (+) button and follow the prompts to add that account to your mac again . you will need to know your username and password to do this

After following those tips, we’re certain you’ll have fixed whatever issues you were having with the Mail app on your Mac. Remember to check your email accounts directly with the server to ensure your password is working as well. That would mean logging onto the Gmail, Outlook, or Yahoo websites directly.

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