February 27, 2008 12:39 PM PST

Mac OS X 10.5.2 Special Report: Mail.app issues

by CNET staff

Users are reporting a series of problems with Mail.app after updating to Mac OS X 10.5.2. Among them:

Problems rendering messages: Some users are reporting an issue in which Mail.app fails to render certain messages -- particularly HTML messages -- or quits immediatley when attempting to open certain messages. Per one reader: "Mail is hanging when trying to display a message after double clicking or after browsing through multiple messages and viewing through previewer window. Window displays empty and then does not draw. App goes not-responding. Am waiting to see if it is hanging due to updating such large mailbox stores."

Messages the trash are inaccessible Readers are also reporting a problem in which messages in the Trash cannot be opened. Kevin Vogelhut writes: "I can see the list of messages in the Trash, but nothing appears in the preview pane, I cannot open these messages in their own window by double clicking on them, and I cannot move the messages to another Mailbox by either drag-and-drop or by using the Move menu command. I need to see the contents of some messages before committing to deleting them forever, so I reported this bug to Apple feedback. Then thought I would try Quitting Mail and then opening it again to see if this helped. It didn't. Now the Trash is empty and the messages formerly in it appear gone."

IMAP and To Do issues Users are also expriencing persistent hangs when attempting to download mail, the failure to retrieve some mail and more. Most of the problems are present with IMAP accounts.

The single most effective fix for this issue is to force Mail.app to recreate your IMAP mailbox as follows: Quit Mail.app then delete the problematic IMAP inbox from:

~/Library/Mail (the ~ refers to your home user directory)

Meanwhile, some users are reporting issues with the "To Do" functionality in Mail.app under Mac OS X 10.5.2. The aforementioned fix might work for this issue. If not, try the following: Quit Mail, then launch iCal, add a To Do. Re-launch Mail and check for persistence of the issue.

Mail.app slow with Exchange Several readers have reported that Mail.app interacts slowly with Exchange servers after the update. One reader writes:

"Verified on iMac, MacBook, and PowerBook G4 running 10.5.2. We're seeing terrible performance with the university's exchange server host. Mail.app cannot keep accounts on line consistently."

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