One of my applications just stopped working, it “Unexpectedly Quit.”

This may not indicate a systemic problem with your Mac. Start the application again, or even restart the computer (using the Apple menu) and start the application again. If it works the second time, it may not be worth the effort to track the problem down.

If the application begins quitting “expectedly,” it’s time to start sleuthing. Think about what’s changed on your computer since the application last worked well. See “General application troubleshooting“ for troubleshooting tips.

In either case, you likely lost what you were doing in that application since your last save. Some applications, such as Microsoft Word and Excel, will try to show you unsaved work when you next start that application—but most applications don’t try to recover. (Since the documents weren’t saved they weren’t stored on the disk, and a disk recovery utility won’t help, unless the application saved some “Temp” files.)

Recently, Apple introduced some new troubleshooting tools. If an application crashes, you will get a dialog box offering to report the problem to Apple or Reopen the application. If you click the Reopen button and the application quits unexpectedly a second time, the dialog box changes and now offers to Try Again with “the application’s default settings” (preferences). If it works this time, you know the preferences were the problem. However, some applications (such as Apple Mail) keep a lot of important information in preferences. Now it’s time to see Apple’s knowledgebase article HT3159 and read about your options.

Published March 24, 2009 12:00 PM
Last modified on June 17, 2009 1:32 PM