Mac mail problems

poppi · Jun 20, 2017

I have 2 iMacs and both use Mac Mail. One of them has a frequent problem when sending mail - the "gear" near the send label spins forever and then sometimes finally sends and sometimes it ends up in the outbox. With the latter if I enter the outbox, open the message, and click send it finally goes. I don't have that problem with the other mac but all the preference settings are identical and both are running on 10.6.8. with Mac Mail v4.6

Suggestions will be appreciated.

Thank you

poppi

lclev · Jun 20, 2017

Well I would hesitate a guess here but running an OS version that is six versions old and a Mail version that is also as old that could be the issue. Security protocols have evolved and changed over the years. You could be running into issue due to the age.

On thing you could try is to open the mail activity window and send a message to see what it shows. You might get information to show what is going on. Just open mail and click on Window then scroll down to Activity. The activity window will stay open as you send your test message so you will be able to see what is happening.

Also you can run connection doctor. It is found under the window tab also. This will check all the connections for all your mail accounts and show any issues - hopefully. And I am assuming this is available in your version of mail.

Might give you some insight and you can post back what you find out.

Lisa

poppi · Jun 20, 2017

Thanks for the quick reply. Please see my responses within your quoted message.

lclev said:
Well I would hesitate a guess here but running an OS version that is six versions old and a Mail version that is also as old that could be the issue. Security protocols have evolved and changed over the years. You could be running into issue due to the age.

That has been suggested many times and I know it is probably true but I have hesitated because updates make my Microsoft office and Adobe PSE incompatible so in addition to the cost of Mac OS update I would need to purchase 2 Office programs and one PSE program. Unfortunately that starts to sound inevitable.

One thing you could try is to open the mail activity window and send a message to see what it shows. You might get information to show what is going on. Just open mail and click on Window then scroll down to Activity. The activity window will stay open as you send your test message so you will be able to see what is happening.

Tried that and several messages flash while the mail is outgoing but they happen so fast that I cannot read them. Also, as always happens, there was no delay these times.

Also you can run connection doctor. It is found under the window tab also. This will check all the connections for all your mail accounts and show any issues - hopefully. And I am assuming this is available in your version of mail.

Tried that on both macs and got confusing different results. Both the one with problems and the one without problems had two identical lines sbcglobal.net and smtp.mail.att.net.email address and both showed successful connection. On the mac WITH the problem there was a 3rd line smtp.mail.att.net which also showed success. On the one without the problems the 3rd line read outbound.att.net.email address and it showed failure to connect. This is very confusing - the two macs have one line different and the one that "failed to connect" (outbound) is not having the problem. Sorry if all this is confusing.

Might give you some insight and you can post back what you find out.

Also ran Onyx as suggested and it corrected many permission discrepancies and cleaned up unidentified problems. Tried downloading the Malwarebytes but it said it wont work with 10.6.8 - Requires 10.9 or higher.

Sorry for teh rambling discourse. You can tell I am quite ignorant in this area.

Thanks again

poppi

Lisa

toMACsh · Jun 21, 2017

Replacing your computer(s) with newer models is also inevitable.

Mac mail problems

poppi

lclev

poppi

toMACsh

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