Is anyone else having this problem? It appears to be something to do with the autosave features in Lion. My Mac Mail has crashed 14 times in two days, which is more crashes than I have seen in the past 8 years of using Apple Mac.
Admittedly, the autosave feature does mean that I only ever lose a few words, but it’s irritating nonetheless and I can’t believe it hasn’t been properly tested before launch. Frankly this is just one of many gripes with OS X Lion, but that’s another post for another day.
Anyone else having these problems?
Did Apple outsource development of Lion to Microsoft?
I have to admit being a recent mac convert that I am not particularly impressed with OS X Lion. In fairness, there are some nice new features but these are overshadowed by the bugs and system instabilities.
And as for the digital delivery only, well, let’s not even comment on that..!
I myself having major issues with Mac Mail. It launches up but then
crashes. Please anyone help!! I also upgraded to lion Big MISTAKE.
Many other applications now working. Safari won’t open either.
HELP
Well, I am glad I am not the only one! my mail has been constantly crashing. Although I typically don’t loose a lot of data due to the autosaves it’s completely annoying.
I don’t know if the crashes are due to the autosave though, Google Chrome suddenly also crashes every few hours (I do typically have 30 browser windows open, am a web developer)
If you find a fix, please let me know
I am seeing the same problem. I thought it was due to using Gmail IMAP rather than the autosave function because I couldn’t understand why the autosave function wouldn’t have been more tested before shipping. Like you, my email has crashed more times in the last 48-hours than the last several years.
I also have a Gmail IMAP account. Does everyone have that? Might help narrow it down if we can find similarities.
That said, mine only crashes when typing messages (not necessarily with the Gmail account).
I am experiences 5-10 crashes a day. I have IMAP accounts. Crashes happen when i make an error and attempt to correct it
Hi David,
I also have a GMail IMAP account, next to 2 google apps accounts.
I am really disappointed in Apple about this. My MacBook Pro used to be the pinacle of stability…
Cheers
I am only experiencing 1-3 crashes per day but that is more that the average year before Lion.
I am also completely unable to use Open Office or Libre Office which I depend on.
I asked everyone else in my company not to upgrade to Lion due to the issues.
Has anyone got any answers?
Hey David,
Exactly the same thing here, it crashes while im typing and I too have a Gmail IMAP account configured. Should we disable the auto save? Can you do that? Cheers.
Yes, I have Gmail IMap and am experiencing the same problems.
My Mail also crashes frequently while typing an email. I do seem to notice that it does it when auto-saving a draft. Running Gmail IMAP through the mail client as well. Used to work fun until Lion reared its ugly head.
Same here. Mail.app crashes several times a day since I have migrated to Lion.
I didn’t think about the IMAP stuff but truth is, all my accounts are IMAP (several GMail and one MobileMe).
I’ll make sure to include that info on the next crash report, in case Apple engineers didn’t figure out by themselves already…
Rgds
Hello, same problem here. Crashes constantly and I am using Gmail IMAP.
Regards
César
Same problem here, under Snow Leopard the OS was rock solid. As you say the autosave only loses a few words but thats not the point.
Serves me right was not waiting for six months before upgrading.
Same here. Mac Mail crashes at leas twice a day in the middle of typing, always.
I am having email problems in Lion. I can’t open messages in my in-box. If I move them to a folder they sometimes open, but sometimes don’t. I get error messages when I do the move. The move occurs, but the message is left behind in the in-box and must be deleted manually. The problem seems worse if there is a photo attached.
BTW, I contacted Apple support and reloaded my Lion OSX, so I started with a completely fresh install, but the problems are the same…
I no longer get any issues…
…I reloaded Snow Leopard!
I’ve just done the same thing.
I am having the same problem. It also appears to me to be linked to autosave, but not 100% sure. It is very irritating.
I have 7 Mac Book Pros in our company and all are suffering this problem. To compound matters our secondary mail app, Thunderbird, will not run under this pathetic excuse for an operating system. Apple knows of the problems and seems uninterested in helping its users get it sorted. The guy at the genius bar told me that there is no fix until, or if, Apple issues one.
James, I have to be honest, I’m a little surprised to hear you have so many Lion builds in your corporate environment; isn’t it normal practice to test new operating systems prior to deployment? I agree with your frustrations but Snow Leopard is still the way to go, especially in the business-space. As for Apple being the only ones able to release a fix, what were you expecting?
It seems to me that the only cure is to get rid of Lion. I wasted another day of my life reverting my MacBook Air to Snow Leopard. No crashes since, and it’s lightning quick again.
On top of that, Apple refunded me for Lion.
It’s very annoying…. when I try to close email, guess what, it doesn’t so I have to force mail to quite. When I open it again I have to move, delete emails again.
I do everything twice …. very annoying!!!!!
Can’t wait for updates!!! I am desperate for updates checking 20 times a day.
I am also having the constant mail crash problem. Apple tech support say that they haven’t had any other problem reports on this and that I am on my own with this problem. Now it doesn’t get any better. 10.7.2 doesn’t fix the bug.
Apple are lieing. I filled out a crash report every time it happened to me, and judging by the comments on this post, I sure as heck wasn’t the only one. Get a refund and put Snow Leopard back on. Reinstalling 10.6 after Lion is a revelation in speed, reliability and usability.
Apple is full of 10-day old bananas (smell and all)…!!!!! Mail.app crashes constantly and for no apparent reason…
:(:( what have we come to??? 
:( Got to find a way out of this addition to Apple products…
And Apple is just sitting there like Johnny Bench….
I’ve been in a constant state of fury with Lion. I stopped using Safari due to constant crashes – I’m back on Chrome – which sucks because I want the two finger back gesture. I’m getting the same crashing in Mail. I’ve noticed one trend though — Safari in full screen = weird rendering, freezing, and constant crashing. Mail in full screen = constant crashing. Call me crazy, but it seems to go down the thunderbox when I put it in full screen. It doesn’t crash in “normal screen” mode. Whatever, I know Apple will fix this soon – it’s just irritating. Meanwhile I’ll be waiting for Google to fix my laggy Nexus S browser
To resolve your issue with mail.app on lion I suggest you do the following:
1. System Preferences
2. Mail, Contacts & Calendars
3. Deactivate (not delete) all the mail accounts you have configured (do not close the window)
4. Launch Mail.app
5. Go back to item 2 but this time re-activate the accounts
Voila
Hope this helps
You solution does work until I have to quit Mail. The next time, I start Mail is crashes again unless I mutually deactivate the accounts before…
My friend Rafael solved it!
Check for the message: “** Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSInvalidArgumentException’[...]” in your console or on your crash report. You will see it makes reference to one email (probably in one of your pre-existing Mail folders) that can not be converted and makes Mail crash every time it arrives at that mail to be indexed/converted to the new format. In my case it was one with a .zip attachment. Get rid of that single eMail and say goodbye to the crashes. At least that worked for me instantly and permanently!
Cheers!
Same problem. Since I converted to Lion, Mail crashes constantly, i.e. 1-5 times a day. Very frustrating. 10.7.2 didn’t bring any fixes… Apple is getting too big. I hope they don’t turn into Microsoft…
I also have deactivated the save drafts on server tab. Crashes less.
Maybe rebuild the database… I’ll delete any dodgy mail as per McQuaas and then do that.
In any event it’s a proper lemon… Not good enough Apple.
(Although have a sneaky suspicion Gmail is the ‘real’ cause)
It’s not Gmail folks. I just upgraded to Lion and am having severe crash problems when I open mail (I can only read through about three mails before the crash). I don’t have any Gmail accounts… Demiguru says to try deactivating the accounts… I can’t find that option. I only find the delete option. Anybody know what’s up here?
The OSX Lion crashes all the time and when it runs, I never know if its working until I send a test mail to myself (which I must do every few hours).
What happened to “It just works”…??? Very frustrated with the new MAIL.
Seems to be very PC like.
JM
Have the same problem. Mail crash when making new mails.
If I after every typed line, click in an other field like bcc og cc field and then back. Then it dose not crash. BUT that is not really a usefull way of typing mails
I have been submitting a lot of crash reports to Apple.
It would be great to get some help…. please
Just tried this http://www.kianhean.com/apple/solve-osx-lions-mail-crashing-issues/1663/
Looks to have worked. We’ll see if in a few days there are no crashes.
Pretty sure you saved my life. Thank you!!!!
Apple Mail is a lousy program almost since it was introduced. The culprit is almost always a single email that failed to load all of the attachments. It is far too simple to assume that it is easy to remove that particular email. Firstly mail will mostly hang rights way after a start up, secondly you probably need to go to the webmail to retrieve the attachments first before you can store it somewhere else or delete it. Apple knows very well that their mail client is one of the lousiest in the market. Still they do not seem to care. Till recently the Sync client was the problem, so Apple simply screwed their Mobile.me customers by removing the the accounts and rules sync. Customers were compensated with some extra storage that nobody will use anyhow.
Switching to another mail client is seldom an option. Due to the fact that numerous other programs offer a form of mail integration with Apple mail only.
Apple does not seem to be able to get either Mail and Safari right. Any Microsoft program will probably work better than these two applications from Apple. But given the fact that Apple is making it’s money by selling mobile phones and iPad’s their view is that Mac customers can screw themselves anyhow.
Since OSX Lion 10.7.2, only problem with Mail, crashed always after 2 or 3 minutes, or when received file such small mvies ( wmv, mkv … ) , sometime it crashed alone, without I make something
I have try everything said here, send mail to Apple, … no answer ..
I have a lot of message in archive and want and need to keep them ( more than 3500 ..)
I really regret Snow Leopard, there was no problem and when to go back if Apple does not make something very very quickly
Steve , you are missing …
gg90 greetings and Happy New Year from France
excuse my poor english
Same here. Mail constantly crashes – 10 – 15 times a day. All my browsers do the same – Chrome, Safari, Firefox & Opera – all as bad as eachother. I have problems with Photoshop CS5 too. Did a clean install of Lion – no better. I’ve been an Mac apostle for 20 years and am about ready to through this iMac in a skip! I can’t believe Apple are so complacent about this – the brand is everything and they are killing it.
I want to sincerely thank you all for being beta testers for Lion. From my hard-won experience with Leopard, the bugs in a new Apple OSX are most pronounced in the Mail app. For Leopard, it wasn’t until about 10.5.6 that things began to get stable for me. So for Snow Leopard, I only upgraded at 10.6.6, and things were superb. I watched the circus in the early iterations of Snow Leopard, and it was great entertainment. Now, with Lion, once again I’m not going to upgrade until about 10.7.6 – but actually there’s nothing in Lion that attracts me, so the only thing that would make me get Lion is if I buy new Mac hardware. Once again, thank you all sincerely for beta testing Lion. As you know, with Apple’s secrecy policy, it does not do secret beta testing, so all you guys paid to become Apple’s public beta testers. Good on you!!!
HELLO TO ALL OF YOU. DemiGuru YOU ARE ALMOST RIGHT WITH YOUR TIP.
BUT I WOULD LIKE THE REST OF YOU GUYS TO TRY THIS:
GO TO AND YOU’LL FIND THE ANSWER WITH PICTURES AND ALL: THIS TIPS WAS WRITTEN FROM KIAN HEAN:
http://www.kianhean.com/apple/solve-osx-lions-mail-crashing-issues/1663/