Mail uses up all CPU resources

Question

Hey! I've got three mail accounts in use with mail, one imap, gmail and a pop account. When I start mail and click on the pop account mail starts to use more and more CPU untill it uses up 100% on both cores. Beside the pop account I can see a clock. Anyone got any idea what's going on, and how I can fix it?

Answer 1

Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
After having fixed all filesystem issues, if any, and making sure that there’s enough space available on the startup disk (a few GB, plus the space needed to make a backup copy of the Mail folder), try this:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/. Make a backup copy of this folder, just in case something goes wrong -- e.g. by dragging it to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down.
3. Locate Envelope Index and move it to the Trash. If you see an Envelope Index-journal file there, delete it as well.
4. Move any “IMAP-” or “Mac-” account folders to the Trash. Note that you can do this with IMAP-type accounts because they store mail on the server and Mail can easily re-create them. DON’T trash any “POP-” account folders, as that would cause all mail stored there to be lost.
5. Open Mail. It will tell you that your mail needs to be “imported”. Click Continue and Mail will proceed to re-create Envelope Index -- Mail says it’s “importing”, but it just re-creates the index if the mailboxes are already in Mail 2.x format.
6. As a side effect of having removed the IMAP account folders, those accounts may be in an “offline” state now. Do Mailbox > Go Online to bring them back online.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder, i.e. ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder.