# Abort Evaluation often doesn't work

**URL:** <https://community.wolfram.com/t/abort-evaluation-often-doesnt-work/27388>\
**Category:** Questions\
**Tags:** mathematica, tuning-and-debugging\
**Created:** [August 1, 2026, 7:22pm UTC](https://community.wolfram.com/t/abort-evaluation-often-doesnt-work/27388 "2026-08-01T19:22:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dgolber](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@dgolber](https://community.wolfram.com/u/dgolber)\
**Post date:** [August 1, 2026, 7:22pm UTC](https://community.wolfram.com/t/abort-evaluation-often-doesnt-work/27388/1 "2026-08-01T19:22:53Z")

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I am using Mathematica 8. I know this is old, but …

It seems that when I have a bug, and Mathematica goes off producing a long string of error messages, the Abort Evaluation (alt-.) does not work. My only alternative is to use Task Manager to kill the kernel.

Any comments?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![mroge02](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/wolfram/user_avatar/community.wolfram.com/mroge02/32/28775_2.png) [@mroge02](https://community.wolfram.com/u/mroge02)\
**Post date:** [August 2, 2026, 4:20am UTC](https://community.wolfram.com/t/abort-evaluation-often-doesnt-work/27388/2 "2026-08-02T04:20:30Z")

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I’ve had similar trouble in the past. In my case, my buggy program generated error messages much faster than the Front End can load and format them in a notebook. While the Front End is busy doing that, it doesn’t read & process the ALT-. input until all the messages that have been queued have been printed — or so I’ve inferred. Then in prints all the messages that have been generated in the meantime.