Mail Import Message -Mail Hangs

Question

When I open Mail it opens a "Mail Message Import" box and if I click on the continue button it goes to a "Preparing to Import Messages" screen with the blue barbers pole but no further action. If I click cancel on this or the previous screen the mail program closes.
Mail was operating normally before. I have installed the latest 10.6 update to no avail.
Any help appreciated

Answer 1

Now you have to do the following :
(1) Create a new fresh user account
(2) go to your existing user folder ~/Library/ and copy the Mail & Mail Downloads folders as they are to an external hard drive or flash memory
(3) Login with the new created user account with your external media still plugged in and copy the Mail and Mail Downloads folders to the new user's Library folder
(4) Open Mail application and sees if it will be able to import and open normally
(5) If the same issue occurred in the new created user account, then we will be sure that there is a certain message and/or attachment and/or account causing the issue, and I would suspect your POP account because it doesn't even start and stop later, it's unable to start the import at all.
(6) At this stage, you should go back to your original existing user account, delete the created user account as it's job would be done. And start the elimination method, first move the Mail Downloads folder out of your Library folder and sees if this helps, if not, put it back and move the POP account folder outside your Mail folder that should be named like [email protected] and start Mail again and see if it will work
(7) If it did work at that stage, then this POP account is corrupted, and you could start a deeper elimination technique by putting it back but not as it is, you should put the POP Account standard mailboxes like Inbox.mbox, Sent Messages.mbox...etc one by one, further you should dive deep inside each POP mbox folder and go to the Messages folders that store your messages individually in the emlx format and copy them as groups, not as a whole and not per one off course.
Hope this will help to resolve your issue.