Mail keeps selecting text in the To & Subject fields as I type

Question

Since upgrading to Leopard (and by upgrade doing a clean install and then running migration assistance) and the 10.5.1 update Mail is acting very strange. When ever I try to type in the To, CC, BCC, Reply To or the Subject Mail immediately selects the texts and 9 times out of 10 will not search the Address Book. For example, I try to type the name "James" but after typing the "J" Mail highlights it so it gets overwritten by the "a" which gets overwritten by the "m" and so on. If am fast enough it will complete "James" and search the Address Book. Or if there is not an entry it will just highlight "James". This behavior makes it impossible to type a new email address or even to write a subject and extremely difficult to pull names automatically from the Address Book. It is one of the weirdest things I have ever seen and I haven't been able to figure out a way to make it stop. Holding down the right arrow key while typing almost made it work but not quite. It seems to delay the selection process by half a second or so but not stop it. Anyone else experience this bizarre behavior or have any idea how to fix it?

Answer 1

While I take some comfort in the fact that I am not the only one experiencing this problem, it really ***** that I have not come across a really effective solution. But I do have an update that might help but only slightly.
So I started messing around with mail since this whole thing started. What I found is removing the "com.apple.mail.plist" file from ~\library\preferences seemed to mostly resolve this problem in the To & Cc address fields. Problems still occurs as described in the Bcc & Subject fields. I initially thought removing this file (and this is after backing up the mail folder, the plist file & and my messages to MailSteward just in case) had completely resolved the issue but no suck luck. Of course, I had to re-add all my accounts. And of course Mail "forgot" all the messages that were originally part of each account even though they were all still in the Mail folder. This is a pet peeve of mine. Mail won't import it's on mail content formats unless you manually open each email and tell it to move to a folder in Mail. But that's another topic.
After resetting up Mail I can normally type in the To & Cc fields and have it search the address book or previous messages. However just typing and pausing between letters causes it to have the problem again about 50% of the time. That is for the To & Cc fields. For the Bcc field I have to do the super fast typing to get it to do the search. So if I am actually fast enough to type "james" it will find it. If am slow and type "jam" the problem returns. If typing a new e-mail not in my address book or a previous e-mail forget about it. Type it somewhere else and then copy and paste. Basically it seems as though it will work if I can somehow get the field to start the address book search when typing. I've tested it a few times and once the field is able to pull up the search results (i.e. pasting a name that it should be able to find) it seems to work fine from that point on. Meaning you can then continue to normally add names to field or make changes to what was previously typed. But it is tricky at best to get it to work in the first place. The Subject line is still a mess and I have resorted to typing the subject in the body of the e-mail and cutting and pasting into the Subject line.
I tested this several times, removing and then restoring the original plist. I hope I have made a clear summary as to my experiences. Basically the original plist file had the original nearly unsolvable problem. When it was removed and Mail recreated it, I set up a new main account and the To & Cc fields were somewhat more forgiving though still have the problem about half the time. While the Bcc field has the problem 99% of the time and so far the Subject field still has it 100%.
For the record I use the Widescreen and HTTPMail plugins. But I am convinced these are not the issue because I did not re-add them to Mail until I had tested this issue with my regular pop account. Once I was satisfied with the results I installed these plugins and there was no difference in the way the program reacted. Also I use SpamSieve but since it only activates when I have new Mail this did not seem to make a difference as I have tried it with it off and on with the same results. This is the most annoying problem I have experienced on a Mac. It has me contemplating switching back to Entourage.