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Currently whenever I start OS X (10.6.2), mail.app starts up with a "Welcome to Mail" dialog, asking me to create an account by inputting name, email address, and password. If I cancel this dialog, the app just hangs and I have to force quit it.

I do not use the mail.app and I do not want it to start up with OS X. I have checked the login items and it is NOT present in the login items list for my account. I have also ctrl+clicked the doc icon that appears and confirmed there is no option enabled for "Run at Login".

If I go ahead and just spam continue through the dialogs for a new account, I can get through to actually using Mail and accessing preferences. I cannot find a startup option in Mail preferences. After I have completed this, if I now restart, Mail does NOT open automatically. However as soon as I delete the account that I created, it once again goes back to popping up a "Welcome to Mail" dialog every time I startup and login.

As best as I can tell, it seems OS X checks if an account exists in the Mail app, and if it does not, it will always start up a "Welcome to Mail" dialog on login, regardless if the Mail app is set to run via login items, etc.

This is incredibly frustrating given I have no intention of using the Mail app. I realize I can easily leave account info in there (perhaps even disable the account via preferences), but this behavior is ridiculous.

Update:

Further tested this by creating a new account. I confirmed that the dialog will still start up and that mail is not set to start on login; neither via Accounts -> Login Items or right clicking it on the dock and checking for the option there.

mindless.panda
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5 Answers5

4

This is probably related to iCal.

I have the same problem and I use iCal in sync with my Google calendar, which is configured to send emails for certain events.

Disabling Automatically receive invitations from mail in iCal preferences does not help.

This post has some more info:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1853470

robinCTS
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3

If you're sure you don't need it, you can just delete it or create an archived backup, for future, and delete.

Sirex
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mxg
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2

I'm experiencing the exact same behavior on 2 of my systems (10.6.2 & 10.5.8)

I think the behavior may be connected to ical Do you use it?

On my leopard system I have never used mail and mainly run it remotely as a server, however I used ical to mirror the my Google calendar from my main system. The message I get from mail on the setup screen has details of my Gmail etc, presumably from ical as I haven't entered this info on mail ever.

On my main system I also get the Gmail detail prefilled. I had assumed this was because I used to use mail and have since went back to Gmail and it had lingering details of previous accounts, however no believe it is linked to ical (which I still use)

Try going to ical preferences (if you use it) going to the advanced tab and disabling 'Automatically receive invitations from mail'

I have just tried this myself and will let you know if this works. Perhaps ical is polling mail for some Gmail info (as the account is shared between Google calendar and Gmail) and is consequently trying to create that account.

Anyway just a thought, it would be interesting if you have a similar ical/Gmail integration.

studiohack
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D0ppelganger
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1

I have never seen Mail launch itself of its own accord on every login. You must have installed something that is doing this.

Download and run this:

http://khiltd.com/software/consultants_canary

Then copy and paste the contents of the resultant Terminal window as code to preserve formatting. You can leave out the top part with your name and serial number and all that jazz.

Hasaan Chop
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1

Based on another thread this is the only thing to work for me:

How do I stop Apple Mail from opening because of iCal appointments?

There's really only one way to kill Mail.app (as per my comment on waiwai's answer):

sudo chmod 000 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail

To reverse:

sudo chmod 755 /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
Community
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Chris
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