Mac Mail will receive but not send

I'm tearing what remains of my hair out with frustration and hope someone can come up with a solution for my problem

I use Mail 5.3 for my emails and have 6 different email addresses for different topics which all feed in to Mail. These are Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, BT Yahoo, Pipex and one other. In January I changed my ISP from Talktalk, who owned Pipex, to BT. I can receive emails in all accounts without a problem.

However, sending emails has become increasingly difficult. I have set up all the accounts so that they can use any server and the servers have one by one been noted as offline so that now they are all offline and I can't send any emails! This is extremely irritating! I never had a problem prior to the changeover, but there was no immediate problem, it's happened gradually

I've checked the Connection Doctor and all the IMAP and POP connections are green and all the SMTP connections are red. I assume that this is significant, because I understand that emails are sent by SMTP (you can see that I'm no expert!) but I've no idea how to change that

When I access the various emails direct via Google, Yahoo etc I can send emails without a problem. Similarly when I use my iPhone, which is only connected to Gmail, I can send emails without a problem using Bt's wifi at home or outside direct

I've spent some time trying to find a solution because I read somewhere that people were having problems with BT but I've had no success

All contributions gratefully accepted!

I posted this yesterday but have just realised that by mischance it was on the Games Forum! Doh! I've had no replies so I'm hoping for more luck here! No pressure on readers!

I'm tearing what remains of my hair out with frustration and hope someone can come up with a solution for my problem

I use Mail 5.3 for my emails and have 6 different email addresses for different topics which all feed in to Mail. These are Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo, BT Yahoo, Pipex and one other. In January I changed my ISP from Talktalk, who owned Pipex, to BT.

I can receive emails in all accounts without a problem.

However, sending emails has become increasingly difficult. I have set up all the accounts so that they can use any server and the servers have one by one been noted as offline so that now they are all offline and I can't send any emails! This is extremely irritating! I never had a problem prior to the changeover, but there was no immediate problem, it's happened gradually

I've checked the Connection Doctor and all the IMAP and POP connections are green and all the SMTP connections are red. I assume that this is significant, because I understand that emails are sent by SMTP (you can see that I'm no expert!) but I've no idea how to change or fix that

When I access the various emails direct on Safari via Google, Yahoo etc I can send emails without a problem. Similarly when I use my iPhone, which is only connected to Gmail, I can send emails without a problem whether using BT's wifi at home or outside direct through O2's network

I'm not sure if it's significant but in the run up to total impasse on sending emails I've been getting loads of requests in Mail for me to enter my password for most of the accounts on and off and get repeat requests immediately even after entering a password that I know is correct

I've spent some time trying to find a solution because I read somewhere that people were having problems with BT but I've had no success and as I need email for my little business as well as socially it's getting critical as it's been a week now

All contributions gratefully accepted!

Please do not cross post or double post. Your original post was in the "OS X Apps and Games" forum which is OK. Your posts have been merged together as one thread.

I had a similar problem chrbyr. I say similar, it was exactly the same. I did however only have the problem when I was connected to a certain network, this being my Uni campus network. When I was at friends, my house, using my mobile data network I could send and receive without problems.
You say that you have moved ISP's recently, did you have this problem when you had Pipex? If not, my first steps would be to see if you can use a friend, or family members internet and try there. If it works at theirs then I would assume that it is your ISP/Router (assuming you have been given a new router)

Thanks
Chris

Thanks for your reply. The problem has only occurred since I changed from Talktalk (Pipex) to BT. As it happens I have partially resolved the problem by deleting all the email addresses from Mac Mail and re-entering them. This process resulted in 2 out of the 6 servers becoming available and the other 4 can use either of the 2 servers available. Ironically one of the servers available is BT's whose email is arranged through Yahoo but my other Yahoo address is offline! Bizarre!

The fact remains that this is a BT problem although they won't acknowledge that and I don't have the will, now that it's sort of fixed, to wrestle with their call centre in India who weren't able to help when my partner's email through Mail on her Mac Pro kept getting error 5.5.3 messages immediately after we changed over. This was solved by her using her Hotmail address online rather than through Mail

Thanks again

Chris

Mail receives but will not send

I had exactly this problem with the AOL server. I don't pretend to know why, but this seems to have worked for me:


]FIRST BE SURE ALL YOUR MAIL IS STORED ON THE SERVER. IF NOT, DO NOT DO THIS AS YOU MAY LOSE ALL YOUR PREVIOUS MAIL ]. Check out Mail / Preferences /Accounts / mailbox behaviours.


Now for the scary bit: remove ALL of your mail accounts Mail / Preferences/ Accounts press -(Minus sign) :

Now reinstall of your accounts Mail / Preferences / Accounts +(Plus) sign / follow instructions

Voila All your mail reappears. I did this a week ago and all accounts now SEND ok