Lock up Leopard Mail in three easy steps
On Apple Discussions Martin Marconcini has discovered 
a way to bring Mail.app to a screaming halt in three easy steps.
Frustrated by Mail’s tendency to freeze when he dragged anything onto Mail’s Dock icon, he went back and painstakingly restored his Mail installation step-by-step until the glitch re-emerged.
Here’s what he discovered (you can test it for yourself):
One: Set Mail’s New message default in the Composing preference pane to plain text.
Two: Add a signature to your email account in the Signatures Preference pane. Make sure that you select it at the bottom of the signature pane to be added to every new message by default:
Three: Drag an image or anything else onto Mail’s Dock icon.
That’s a big, 100%-repeatable train wreck for me.
It seems like a common configuration; it’s not restricted to dragging ClarisWorks documents onto the Dock icon when the signature contains a particular accented Laotian character. How does such a thing not emerge in internal testing? Perhaps I am too romantic about internal testing.
Anyway, happily, I am in the clear. All my signatures are just a few keystrokes away in TextExpander.
But Martin suggests some workarounds for those plagued by these freezes:
a) Use Rich Text (not an option if you use Blackberry or need plain text)
b) Use Plain Text but remove the signatures (can be a Pain In the A** if you use different business accounts like me with odd disclaimers that are a “must”).
c) Roll back to Safari 3.0.* and either use it or use Camino/Opera/Firefox/Etc. Could be a problem if you rely on Safari stuff like Inquisitor, 1Password, etc.
d) Don’t drag attachments to the dock icon…
On 8 April Apple acknowledged this as “a known issue, which is currently being investigated by engineering”.
Tags: Apple Mail, attachments, bug, Dock, mail.app, plain text, rich text, signatures, WebKitRelated posts
June 16th, 2008 at 1:22 am
Thanks!
I have this EXACT configuration and it’s been driving me crazy on the occasion that I drag a file into the Mail App Doc icon.
I’m glad it’s not just me going crazy.
June 16th, 2008 at 1:25 am
holly cow! i’ve even tried re-installing os x on my laptop to get rid of this problem. thought it is some kind of software conflict with one of the installed addons, etc.
i hope apple will fix it in 10.5.4… in any case, i really miss good e-mail client for mac, which just works, like TheBat! used to work in Windows.
June 16th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Yes, it happened to me as well. I have ‘Report’ed the crash to Apple, let’s see…
June 16th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Not a problem with rich text. :)
June 16th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Do people normally drag stuff onto their Mail icon? I do that with many other apps, but I’ve never done it once with Mail.
June 16th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I guess usage patterns vary. It’s rare for me to start an email by wanting to attach something, that more often happens “in mid-flight”, either by dragging into the email or using the ⇧⌘A keyboard shortcut.
Martin (the original digger) seemed to do it more.
June 17th, 2008 at 12:21 am
I used the feature quite a lot, however recently I have moved to an Applescript called ‘Attaché’ which puts more information in the body of the message like the size of the attachment. I use it by dragging and dropping on the Dock icon as well. Funnily enough, attaché works but Mail erases some of the extra information that the script is supposed to add in the body of the message - you see it contained in the message and then erased when the attachment icon is added.
June 17th, 2008 at 2:12 am
Ah! I don’t use this feature but the I have suffered Mail lock up when trying to send a file via Mail when selecting file in Finder and choosing Finder/Services/Mail/Send File.
I have Plain Text and Signatures but when I changed Preference to Rich Text it cures the problem. I have only used it occasionally and always assumed I must have done something wrong!
June 18th, 2008 at 1:42 am
Thanks Tim for reposting info about Attaché, the new version for Leopard works perfectly - maybe Apple should check the author’s code. ;-)
July 4th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Wow, I’ve been plagued by that problem with both dropping the attachment on the icon and when I select the attachment file with Quicksilver and tell it to compose an email. Spinning Beachball of Death each time. ugh!
And I just happen to have plain txt with signatures.
I really hope Apple / Mac support fix this problem.