PlzHelp: MAIL stald wont stop "READING TABLE of CONTENTS" - Beachbalodeth

From time to timme thiis happens.
Trying open Mail applic as usual, but suddenly MAIL stalled wont won't completely open ready for use cuz beachballodeth spins without ceasing & main window Mail reads "READING TABLE of CONTENTS" -
Have opened and shut down Mail applic repeatedly to no avail.
Have shut down mac and restarted repeeeeeately. still Mail stals reading tableOcontents, nonresponsive, ball spinning.
Will appreaciate any hep cuz now Mail is deth to me.
thanx

Well, finally seems to have solved itself again... after
I restarted Mail applic a few more times.
I had a lot of letters open so they took a while to pop up to my screen or dock.I kept on hitting 10 for Expose to show only Mail windows on screen. Mail still stuck 'reading table of contents'.
Finally when the opportunity struck i managed to place the cursor over the red dot to close each unnecessaryily openn letter annd or window. Heck, i closed just aboout all of them till the only thing remaining was my Mail applic main viewer window. And it was finally working.
So that's my happy ending.
Don't have to sweat giving my an answer now,
Unless someone wants to write mme an explanntion of what happened. For that I'll leave this question still open for a while longer.
Thanks

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Mail - Stuck in Reading Table of Contents and Copying Messages

Mail has been stuck in this loop for the past week. It is either reading table of contents or copying messages. It doesn't stop no matter how long I have it running. I wasn't able to send mail, but somehow that started working. I cannot delete messages (or they seem to delete but come back on restart). I also must force quit to get out of it. Does anybody have any ideas? Help!!!!

One account, IMAP to my university server. Tried Rebuild.
Tried Cache cleaners. Hard disk is 50% full. Inbox has on
the order of 50 messages in it at any one time.
My wife's iMac has the same problem (one account, IMAP,
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By the way, I also expereince the mysterious "mail marked
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After reset Mail hangs w/spinning ball on "Reading table of contents"

This problem is on a 17" monitor Power PC G4, 256mb DDR SDRAM.iMac, half ball bottom, with Mail, with Systems 10.3.9
After Reset, Mail is hanging with the spinning beach ball on "Reading table of contents." Quite a few emails are being retrieved and placed in the Dock before the hang, and Mail responds to mouse commands up to the "hang." Then a Force Quit is the only way to proceed. Other programs run OK, with Mail "hung."
The reason for the Reset is that my daughter reads "fan fiction," and can go through a hundred pages in an hour, and the computer gets so plugged up that it takes FIVE MINUTES to retrieve, then display another Safari window. Empty Cache does not help. So, to get things back to normal, a reset is required. Something went wrong on this reset.
This happened once before, possibly with OS-X 10.2, and I was advised to delete a file somewhere deep in Systems, and Mail apparently made a "new" file and all was fine from then on. My "guess" is that Mail then makes a new "table of contents."
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iMac 17" "half ball bottom" 1 GHZ PowrPc G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Hello Jean.
When you use the term "reset", are you referring to a
computer restart?
On this PowerPC with 10.3.9, what is the hard drive
capacity and available free space?
If the problem Inbox mailbox is for a POP type
account, with the Mail.app quit and using the Finder
go to Home > Library > Mail > this account named
folder (named by the user name and incoming mail
server for the account) > INBOX.mbox.
Move the INBOX.mbox to the Desktop.
Launch Mail and if successful, a new (and empty)
INBOX.mbox will be created automatically by Mail
within this account named folder when receiving the
next message with this account.
This should allow the Mail.app to function properly
again while working on the old INBOX.mbox move to the
Desktop to recover the existing messages.
Control-click on the old INBOX.mbox moved to the
Desktop and at the menu window that appears, select
Show Package Contents.
List the package content file names and size of
each here.
I have had the same problem as Jean - did what you advised and now find mail runs find but need to rescue the old mail.
This is the package content of my old inbox:
content index 36 kb
content_index-computername.local-372 10.9 MB
info.plist 4 kb
mbox 939.1 MB
tableofcontents 1.5 MB
hope you can help me...
x
habibi

MAIL SBBOD 'reading Table o contents' 4evr. Have restarted manytimes.

I had shut down computer and restarted. Now MAIL almost opens, but won't quite settle down, unuseable cuz busy 'Reading Tafle of Contents' and Spinning Beach Ball of Death (SBBOD) constantly. Unuseable.
This has happened many times in past but allways finally Mail would be ok if I Forced Quit, then started and restarted once or several times.
But II've done that now many times today and still Mail won't settle down and be useable.
I would like to know the cause and solution, cuz it is beyond frustrating.
I will be thanking you, now in advance, and later when solved

Maybe this is SOLUTION which will help others and remind myself. Stumbled upon it. Tried repeatedly, maybe thirty times yesterday to use mail, but it kept on spinning and saying 'Reading Table of Contents' and was totally unresponsive and had to force quit and try again.
Then I realized:
I have keep too many open emails on desktop and doc. Sort of as a visual reminder to attend to them. But the number was too many. I started deleting some, first from the Dock. Soon, mail was responding.
I even had way to many 'Viewer Windows' open, on dock and desktop.
Won't say how many, cuz embarassing. Let my folly help others.
So, this is probably the solution, and I am awarding my own darn self the highly coveted appelation of THE SOLVER.

Mail spinning, won't delete, "reading table of contents", etc. help?

First off, forgive my un-tech-ness.
I recently went away and before I left I
set my Mail Prefs to disable "remove
copy from server" since I would be using
a different computer and didn't want to
risk losing any mail. Was able to retrieve my
mail remotely with no problem. However, when I
returned home, even though I immediately changed
the preferences back to remove the copies from the
server right away, each message left on the server was loaded into my inbox three or four times. Then the fun started - spinning ball, messages like "reading table of contents","copying 48 out of 50" "opening mailbox". I moved the duplicates to the trash and even deleted them from trash,but then I had to force quit so when I opened Mail the
next time, same problems with hanging up and duplicate
messages all still there. Oddly (maybe not, I don't know
enough to know what's odd-) I can receive and send mail with no problem. I have to force quit every time. I tried moving MessageRules.plist to Desktop as suggested in another post, but no luck.
Thanks for any help anyone out there can offer.

Not sure, but the mailbox appears to have become corrupt (maybe “overstuffed”, see below).
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 the filesystem issues, if any, and ensuring that there’s enough space available on the startup disk (a few GB, plus the space needed to make a copy of Inbox), try this:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/.
3. Locate INBOX.mbox and move it to the Desktop.
4. Open Mail. A new empty INBOX.mbox will automatically be created within the account folder, and this will allow you to continue using Mail normally while trying to solve the problem.
Although INBOX.mbox appears to be a file, it’s actually a special kind of folder (a package) that contains several files. Ctrl-click on INBOX.mbox and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu to see the files it contains. Of these files, mbox is the most important and is where all your messages are stored. What’s the size of that file? Depending on its size, you may or may not be able to directly import it back into Mail in the next step.
An Incoming_Mail file may also be present, in which case it might contain messages that Mail couldn’t transfer to mbox. Incoming_Mail is also a standard mbox file like mbox proper, just named differently, and can be imported back into Mail in the same way.
5. In Mail, do File > Import Mailboxes and follow the instructions to import the INBOX.mbox that’s on the Desktop. I’m not sure what the import options available in Mail 1.x are, but you should choose Other / Standard mbox or something like that, so that Mail looks at the mbox file only (and Incoming_Mail, if present) and ignores the other files in the package.
If Mail doesn’t let you select INBOX.mbox in step 5 because it’s a package instead of a plain folder, rename INBOX.mbox to just INBOX (i.e. remove the .mbox suffix) so that it becomes a normal folder, and try again. You cannot do this directly in the Finder because removing a suffix by normal means causes the Finder to hide the suffix instead of renaming the file. To remove the suffix from the name, you must do File > Get Info (⌘I) on the file and change the name there.
Do with the imported mail whatever you wish. You may move the messages anywhere you want and get rid of the imported mailboxes afterwards, but take a look at the following article first:
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
If all is well and you don’t miss anything, the files on the Desktop can be deleted, although you may want to keep them for a while, just in case.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder (i.e. /Users/username). Hence, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder (i.e. /Users/username/Library).

Mail stuck in "Reading table of contents" mode

Hello,
Background: I recently upgraded from prehistoric OS 9.2.1 to OS X. I used a DVD version bought on eBay from a non-Apple source. I set up Mail 1.3.4 as directed. It all seemed to work well for a while.
Problem: I started noticing trouble when I began importing my old e-mails from the program I used to use, Outlook Express 5 (now operating in Classic). Some of the folders would import, but others would not.
OK, I can live without some of those e-mails, but now, a worse problem has arisen. First, when I open Mail from the dock, the mailbox doesn't appear. I soon realized that File>New Viewer Window remedied that, though I thought it was strange. But once I bring up that new window, the Mail application is permanently stuck in "Reading table of contents" mode, with the little spinning circle of lines at the right going on forever.
I can click around -- it's not completely frozen. It just won't retreive mail. When I try to quit, Command-Q doesn't work. I have to force-quit.
I've been making do with webmail, making sure to delete all excess spam e-mails.
Accounts: In case this helps, it is a POP-type account. Within that are two mailboxes. It has a .pop outgoing server and .stmp incopming server.
What should I do??
Thanks,
quaco

Just bumping this up. I'm afraid I am still having this problem.

Reading table of contents on my mail.app for ever

reading table of contents on my mail.app for ever... it seam as is crashed... can sobody help me?
thanks

Hi CARLIN,
To remove the account, all you need to do is to go to your Mail Preferences, go to the Accounts tap, select the AOL account and click the Remove button ( - ) in the lower left hand button of the window. Take a look at the article below for more information.
Mail (Yosemite): Set up Mail with your email accounts
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH19132
Remove an account
When you remove an email account from Mail, the account’s messages are deleted and no longer available on your Mac. Copies of messages remain on the account’s mail server and are still available (from webmail, for example).
Important: If you’re unsure whether messages you want to keep are still on the mail server, move or copy them into a mailbox stored on your Mac (the mailbox appears in the On my Mac section in the Mail sidebar) before you delete the account in Mail.
Choose Mail > Preferences, then click Accounts.
Select an account, then click Remove - .
Take it easy,
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Reading Table of Contents

When I open my mail program, a dozen or more fairly recent emails also pop open and clog my desk top. Then, I get a spinning pinwheel and the message "Reading Table of Contents" at the top of my mail program. I have to force quit and sometimes this will go away if I restart, but not always. It's exceedingly annoying. Can anyone please give me advice on why these emails are opening and how to stop them from doing so, as well as how to get out of "reading table of contents" mode?
Thanks,
L
g4 powerbook Mac OS X (10.3.9)

You're welcome.
First of all, if launching Mail while holding the Shift key down didn't prevent Mail from opening all those messages, and if that's still a problem, you can fix it re-creating the preferences file as follows:
1. Quit Mail.
2. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something goes wrong. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is stored.
3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate the com.apple.mail.plist file and move it to the Desktop (to be deleted if this fixes the problem).
You'll have to set up your non-Mac accounts from scratch all over again. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don't. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in ~/Library/Mail/ when done.
You'll also have to re-configure most of your settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it's enabled.
Now, as to other things you should be aware of regarding the Table Of Contents problem, take a look at the following article in case it applies to you:
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the file path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the file path there.

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Help!!!!
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I did a clean install from my original Panther 10.3 CDs.
It still doesn't work!
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Darlene Fatica

Hadn't noticed the Import Mailboxes command, will remember it for next time. Unfortunately, even though it imported the InBox mails, it would immediately start "Reading Table of Contents" and not stop.
I have his iBook in my possession and I'll continue to play around with it, just getting the original "Reading Table of Contents" to stop was great and getting the old inbox messages back would just have been frosting on the cake.
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You removed all mailboxes (.mbox files) located within this problem account named folder at Home > Library > Mail and the same occurs when re-launching Mail?
The TableofContents file is a package file for a .mbox so it is hidden.
I'm not sure how you removed all mailboxes for this account but quit Mail first and using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail > this POP account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account). Move the account named folder to the Desktop.
Launch Mail and if it launches successfully without locking up and quitting, a new account named folder will be created automatically by Mail within the account named folder.
All email clients have limits and the recommended size limit for a Jaguar or Panther mailbox is 1GB and for Tiger Mail, 2GB.
An "overstuffed" mailbox issue can occur at any mailbox size (which means the mailbox has some corruption and/or is over the recommended size limit) but is more likely to occur depending on the number and size of message attachments contained in a mailbox and especially as a Jaguar or Panther mailbox approaches or exceeds 1GB in size.
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I often have problems getting my Apple Mail to open. It just says "Reading table of contents" and doesn't open. Sometimes after numerous Forced Quits it opens. When doing a Forced Quit, it sometimes says "Not Responding".
Is there anything that I can do to get Apple Mail to work? Or, is there anything else out there that works better that Apple Mail that I can download off the net?
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Still not sure what you mean. Anyway, if there are no filesystem issues, the procedure to fix the problem for the Inbox of a POP account would be as follows. I cannot be more specific with the information you’ve provided (actually, I don’t even know whether the affected mailbox is one of the Inboxes or it’s something else):
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/.
3. Locate INBOX.mbox and move it to the Desktop.
4. Open Mail. A new empty INBOX.mbox will automatically be created within the account folder, and this will allow you to continue using Mail normally while trying to solve the problem.
Although INBOX.mbox appears to be a file, it’s actually a special kind of folder (a package) that contains several files. Ctrl-click on INBOX.mbox and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu to see the files it contains. Of these files, mbox is the most important and is where all your messages are stored. What’s the size of that file? Depending on its size, you may or may not be able to directly import it back into Mail in the next step.
An Incoming_Mail file may also be present, in which case it might contain messages that Mail couldn’t transfer to mbox. Incoming_Mail is also a standard mbox file like mbox proper, just named differently, and can be imported back into Mail in the same way.
5. In Mail, do File > Import Mailboxes and follow the instructions to import the INBOX.mbox that’s on the Desktop. I’m not sure what the import options available in Mail 1.x are, but you should choose Other / Standard mbox or something like that, so that Mail looks at the mbox file only (and Incoming_Mail, if present) and ignores the other files in the package.
If Mail doesn’t let you select INBOX.mbox in step 5 because it’s a package instead of a plain folder, rename INBOX.mbox to just INBOX (i.e. remove the .mbox suffix) so that it becomes a normal folder, and try again. You cannot do this directly in the Finder because removing a suffix by normal means causes the Finder to hide the suffix instead of renaming the file. To remove the suffix from the name, you must do File > Get Info (⌘I) on the file and change the name there.
Do with the imported mail whatever you wish. You may move the messages anywhere you want and get rid of the imported mailboxes afterwards, but take a look at the following article, in case there is something there that applies to you:
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
If all is well and you don’t miss anything, the files on the Desktop can be deleted, although you may want to keep them for a while, just in case.
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.

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You removed all mailboxes (.mbox files) located within this problem account named folder at Home > Library > Mail and the same occurs when re-launching Mail?
The TableofContents file is a package file for a .mbox so it is hidden.
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PlzHelp: MAIL stald wont stop "READING TABLE of CONTENTS" - Beachbalodeth

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