Emails taking a long time to display messages in the Preview window

Question

Emails taking a long time to display messages in the Preview window

I've been having issues with my email taking along time to display the message in the preview window. iMac is a late 2015 model, 3.2 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i5, 32 GB memory, using Monterey 12.6.3 and Mail 16.0.

After new emails download, I click on one of the new emails and nothing displays in the preview except I can see who the email is from, the subject of the email and "To" and "Reply-To" lines. I'm using the "Side Preview" option in mail.

One after the other is like this. I can hide email, launch Safari and surf the web for a few minutes, come back to mail and then finally the messages will display. Sometimes there is no delay is the messages being visible in the preview window. Even have issues with emails I've already looked at but kept in the inbox taking minutes to display again in the preview window. I've tried rebuilding the mailbox which seems to help temporarily but then it acts up again.

I'm wondering if I should try deleting the mail preference file? If so, where is this file located? I've looked but not sure what file I should try deleting or where it is located. Anything else I should try.

This is so annoying, to say the least, especially when there are 40-50 emails after I get home from work.

Thanks in advance for your help/suggestions.

iMac 27″, macOS 12.6

Posted on Jan 28, 2023 9:02 PM

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Answer 1

PRP_53

Level 10

91,099 points

Feb 4, 2023 2:06 AM in response to Steve Scherf1

In Finder >> Hold OPTION Key and Go .

This will normally reveal the Library folder of your Home Folder ( User Account )

Maneuver to " Preferences " .

Be very careful to look at all plist files until finding the " com.apple.mail-shared.plist file "

I suggest you copy that file to Desktop incase you need to put it back

Once done, drag and drop the Original to Trash but do not empty the trash.

It can be a backup to your already backup on the Desktop

Re-open Mail and Test some more

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Answer 2

PRP_53

Level 10

91,099 points

Jan 29, 2023 4:51 AM in response to Steve Scherf1

Ae the problematic e-mail contains a lot of Images or a combination of Images and Text.

If I remember correctly, in Monterey, Apple introduced a Tab in Apple Mail >> Preferences called " Privacy ".

But default, some of the 3 options there, are enabled.

Try disable some or All and see if this makes the problem go ways

image below

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Answer 3

Jan 30, 2023 3:56 PM in response to PRP_53

Well I got home today from work and had 50-60 emails waiting for me. Everyone of them displayed the moment I clicked on them, so that is encouraging! I'll keep an eye on things over the next few days and see if this continues or if it goes back to having issues displaying emails and let you know.

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Answer 4

Feb 3, 2023 5:18 PM in response to PRP_53

So here is the latest update. Emails have been displaying much better since I turned off those privacy options. However, I run into seemingly at least 1 email a day that will say "This message has no content" and doesn't display anything. I can check email on my iPhone and the email that says it has no content on my iMac displays just fine on the phone. I have to do a rebuild on the mailbox on the iMac mail and then it will display the message content. Not sure why there seems to always be 1 email that is like this. I'd still like to try and delete the mail preference file and see if that helps clear up any remaining bugs for me. Do you know where the mail preference file is located/what the name of it is?

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Answer 5

Feb 4, 2023 8:15 AM in response to PRP_53

I've got 2 files in my Home/Library/Preferences folder. One called "com.apple.mail-shared.plist" and one called "com.apple.mail.plist". However I'm not sure either of these is the correct file. I made a couple of small changes to the preferences in mail a few minutes ago. But when I go to this folder, these 2 preference files show modified dates of September 30, 2015 and September 25, 2018 respectively.

If I go to Home/Library/Mail there is a folder in there called V9 and inside that a folder called Mail Data that has a lot of files and preference files in it. Some of them have today's modified date. So I'm wondering if one of these files is the mail preference file I'm looking for? A file called "SyncedFilesInfo.plist" has the modified time/date of when I made my small changes in the preferences a few minutes ago.

Thoughts?

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Answer 6

PRP_53

Level 10

91,099 points

Feb 4, 2023 8:36 AM in response to Steve Scherf1

I 👍, like your yourself, seem to want everything to be " Just Right " and the extra work to achieve this is ok.

But at some point, the time and effort for 1 Mis-Behaving e-mail seems well, perhaps just rebuilding the Mail Boxes is better ?

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Answer 7

Jan 29, 2023 11:41 AM in response to PRP_53

It doesn't seem to matter if the email contains images or just text, it can take a while to display it. I will try turning off those privacy options and see if it makes any difference.

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