Mail App broken in 10.6.6 ?

I don't even know why I did it, but I upgraded to 10.6.6. Thought everything was fine, but as I just now tried to open mail, I got what you see in the screen shot. Clicking the help button does nothing except to freeze mail and I have to force quit it. Otherwise, it just closes on its own.

I've already fixed disk permissions (after the update) so I'm not sure of where to go from here. I'll try repairing permissions one more time just in case.

Doug

Interesting. On my MB Pro it says the Mail app is Version 4.4 (1082). If you have the Snow Leopard disc handy I'd try reinstalling Mail. It might also work using the combo updater.

Or try downloading the OS X.6.6 Combo Updater. Version 4.4 build 1082 also on my Mac Pro:-


http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1349

I thought about the combo updater as well but couldn't find a definite answer about whether there was an update to mail included.

Say Doug if you run Software Update does Mail show as one of the apps needing to be updated? I would thing that it would given that yours does not appear to b the current version.

I only ever do updates via the Apple site and do the combo's, so that theory is out. I did also check for updates and nothing there either. I'm guessing that even though I did the combo update, (as well as the previous time) Mail failed to receive all the necessary data. That worries me a bit, as I'm wondering what else (if anything) might be affected/missing.

That said, I really don't think that reinstalling Mail via the Snow Leopard Disk will accomplish anything. I'm going to look on their site for any relevant Mail updates. Thanks for trying though guys. If anything else comes to mind, just spit it out.

Doug

Question: Would there be any negative consequences to re-installing the combo update? Reason I'm asking is that I just thought of something that might have been a problem. I keep my Mail app in a folder within the Applications folder, so it's possible that during the last few updates, Mail (along with some other apps because I do this with all of them) wasn't seen ?

Doug

I think you might have hit on something there. AFAIK all of the Apple apps (Mail, iTunes, etc) need to be in their default locations in order for Software Update to "see" them. The same is probably true for the Combo Updaters.

Have you tried moving the apps back to their default locations and then running Software Update? I doubt if repeating the Combo Updater would hurt but when I looked on the Apple site last night I could not tell if the current Combo Updater contained Mail or not.

It's very possible that this is the case - I moved Mail once and when an email reminder was to be sent, OS X complained that it couldn't find it. It's likely therefore that OS X depends on Mail being in its default location (much like I discovered).

I've never done it but it should be fine to reapply the combo update. I'd make a backup before hand just in case (I'm paranoid about losing data) but you seem smart enough to know when you need to back up your data.

Take it out straight away Doug as the Updater is unable to find the Mail folder within another folder in Applications. Then run the Combo Updater again and let us know the result?

Ok, will do. Have had cable outages here so couldn't download it before. Will try again now.

Doug

Yup, that did it! I moved back all the native apps to the proper Applications folder, and updated with the combo again, to find everything working properly afterward. Thanks guys.

Doug

Our pleasure Doug. You know the old saying about many hands making the old light work ~ in this case the light globe flashed!

As a counterpoint - I have all my iLife apps in an iLife folder in Applications. I also moved all my purchased appstore apps to various folders. Mail upgraded to 4.4 for me when I went to 10.6.6 and when I said upgrade from the Appstore my download programs updated even though they weren't directly in Applications.

Interesting Ivan. Seems that quirkiness is something to be expected in OS X from time to time. Ah well. No harm done.

Doug

Workaround to correct Mail.app (10.6.x) disfunction.

Hey Boys... great job.

I'm a new user in this forum and I want to thank all the moderators of this site for the good job done.
I want to thank all the users that are been a great start/help for me, too.

I think that to correct the problem about a not functioning Mail.app in 10.6.x releases, you can simply
edit (as Root and from "nano" in a shell window that, IF the Mail application resides in the standard
directory, can probably be evoked as like:

sudo nano /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Info.plist

the file Info.plist contained in the Mail.app package with this values :

Under Root Level
- CFBundleShortVersionString (String Value) from 4.3 to 4.4
- CFBundleVersion (String Value) from 1081 to 1082
- ExpectedMessageVersion (String Value) from 1081 to 1082

Save your changes and all is done!
This is ONLY a little workaround but it goes ok for me.
What about it?

I wish a Happy New Year to all the staff and Users.
Have a good Week End, boys.
Bye from Gabriele. - Italy