HT1277 I cannot open the new email icon for 10.6.8 and the latest secrtoy update. My old "Stamp" icon email won't let me in either indicating that the new OS version doesn't work. Please help

Question

I cannot open the new email icon for 10.6.8 including the latest security update. My old "Stamp" icon email won't let me in either indicating that the new OS version doesn't work. Please help. I have spend over 4 hours installing and reinstalling updates, etc. and I don't know where to go from here.....

Answer 1

Mac OS X v10.6: Mail.app won’t open, or "You can't use this version of Mail…" alert after installing Security Update 2012-004:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4424?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US
Fellow user Grant Bennet-Alder offers this solution:
Some users have reported this problem if the Mail Application has been moved out of the top-level /Applications folder, or duplicated in another location.
When the Security Update is done, the old version of Mail is disabled.
The solution has been to:
1) make certain Mail is in the /Applications folder
2) There is no other copy anywhere else.
3) Once steps 1 and 2 have been done, Manually download and re-apply the Security Update (2012-004) by hand.
Security Update 2012-004 (Snow Leopard)
If the Mail.app has been LOST, it can be re-installed by applying the 10.6.8 version 1.1 combo update. But this update is quite large and it is usually not necessary:
Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1