Mail mystery

[poppi]

Not sure where to post this so trying here. All of a sudden my wife's iMac is not receiving mail. I know she should be receiving but nothing new for more than 48 hours. When we log into the internet account and click on mail there are several new messages but they are not being received in Mail (the Mac app).. Her machine is rather old and is at Mail 4.6 but as said it was working quite well until 2 days ago.

Checked junk mail and the messages are not going there.

Suggestions please

poppi

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Not sure where to post this so trying here. All of a sudden my wife's iMac is not receiving mail. I know she should be receiving but nothing new for more than 48 hours. When we log into the internet account and click on mail there are several new messages but they are not being received in Mail (the Mac app).. Her machine is rather old and is at Mail 4.6 but as said it was working quite well until 2 days ago.

Checked junk mail and the messages are not going there.

The first thing that I would do would be to call your internet service provider (ISP) and see if they have changed something so that your settings in Mail need to be changed. I know that it sounds really stupid for your ISP to make such a change without informing you, but in the real world it happens all the time.

If you enter your email address in the Web site below, it will provide the Mail settings that Apple thinks that you should have. (But asking your ISP is better.)

Mail Settings Lookup
Mail Settings Lookup

If the above doesn't resolve your problem, just report back and I can give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to troubleshoot Mail. But for now I think that contacting your ISP is your best bet.

 

[IWT]

Very helpful Mail Settings Lookup, Randy. Thanks for that. I've saved it for the day when.............

Ian

 

[Rod]

Yes, I second that, thanks again Randy, you’re a real font of handy/helpful web sites. I too have saved it for when...

Back on topic, I agree sometimes things just change and we have to change with them. One way of fixing this is to delete the email account and set it up again from scratch. Assuming you have adequate storage at your email provider all of your emails will re load.


Sent from my iPhone using Mac-Forums

 

[chscag]

Back on topic, I agree sometimes things just change and we have to change with them. One way of fixing this is to delete the email account and set it up again from scratch. Assuming you have adequate storage at your email provider all of your emails will re load.

That should be the absolute last thing to do, like when you're desperate and nothing else seems to work. Nowadays, one's email address and account is akin to one's street address.

 

[krs]

That should be the absolute last thing to do, like when you're desperate and nothing else seems to work.

Agree 100%

I had the problem of no longer receiving emails maybe twice in the last 10 years - in each case it was "fixed" by just changing a setting in my Apple Mail account to accommodate a change by the ISP.

 

[Rod]

I should have added, assuming you backup your email to iCloud as well which is a default setting. I can say that although it may be a last resort it's hardly as dire as one might think. I perform a "clean" install of macOS at each new operating system and that means erasing my SSD, including my email accounts. There is nothing in them that I have not saved elsewhere and the emails themselves all reload after reinstalling the account information via iCloud backup. Usually all I need to enter is the password and occasionally the account address.
Having said that attempting to fix the account settings is definitely the first thing to try.

 

[poppi]

The first thing that I would do would be to call your internet service provider (ISP) and see if they have changed something so that your settings in Mail need to be changed. I know that it sounds really stupid for your ISP to make such a change without informing you, but in the real world it happens all the time.

If you enter your email address in the Web site below, it will provide the Mail settings that Apple thinks that you should have. (But asking your ISP is better.)

Mail Settings Lookup
Mail Settings Lookup

If the above doesn't resolve your problem, just report back and I can give you a step-by-step tutorial on how to troubleshoot Mail. But for now I think that contacting your ISP is your best bet.

Thank you Randy

Tried the suggested trouble shooting site and everything appears to be set correctly. Called the ISP ( ATT) an they checked their settings and all appears OK which is what I would expect since we are receiving emails through Firefox. He had me look for filters by clicking what looks like a of curves above the Mail site but there was nothing specific to mail filters. At that point he used the usual "Mac mail is beyond my expertise" so they were of no help.

ny furter suggestions?

Thnk you

poppi

 

[krs]

I take it you can send emails OK via Apple Mail, you are just not receiving any?

And you are not getting any error messages like password incorrect or incoming mail server problem.

Seeing incoming mail in Firefox just means that the ATT email server is receiving the emails, but for some reason Apple Mail can't communicate with the server to retrieve the emails.

Are you retrieving emails manually by clicking on the mail icon or is it set up to retrieve emails automatically?

Basic question I don't tink was asked yet - are you using POP email or IMAP? My comments relate more to POP.

PS: Can you post a screen shot of the Apple Mail Account Setting "Advanced" page - mine looks like this:

 

[Randy B. Singer]

Any further suggestions?

Yes. Here we go!:

The first thing that I'd try, surprisingly, is to turn off, or even better, uninstall, any third party anti-virus program that you have running. Restart your Mac and see if things are better. Modern anti-virus utilities interact with your e-mail program, and yours might be interfering with your getting your mail.

If that doesn't help, the next thing that I'd do is disable, or upgrade, or uninstall any Mail add-ins or helper apps. (e.g. Mail Act-on, SpamSieve, GPGMail).
Afterwards, restart your Mac and see if things are better.

If they aren't, then you might begin suspecting a corrupted/malicious e-mail that is causing Mail to choke. The way to deal with that is to log into your ISP's mail server using the Web-based interface most ISP's provide and to delete the problematic e-mail manually. The problematic one is usually easy to spot. It's usually either spammy or unreadable. (i.e. it's usually e-mail that you would delete anyway.)

If that doesn't work, I'd quit Mail, move Mail's "Mail Downloads" folder (in your user Library folder which you can get to by going into the Finder and holding down the Option key while choosing the Go menu) to the desktop, relaunch mail, and see if the problem is gone. If it is, your problem is a corrupted e-mail attachment that you had previously downloaded.

Did't work? Delete all of Mail's log files:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Logs/Mail/

Still no joy? Quickly rebuild mailboxes to update the messages in them.
Apply curves adjustments to a photo in Photos on Mac - Apple Support
• Select a mailbox in the Mail sidebar, then choose Mailbox --> Rebuild
This will empty the mailbox and rebuild it from the server.

Hope this helps. If it doesn't, then it's time to start considering a fresh install of the Mac OS using Mac Recovery, which will give you a fresh copy of Mail. For what it's worth, I don't suspect that it will or should come to that.

 

[Rod]

As everyone in this forum knows I am not a big fan of Apple's Mail app, I have used alternative mail clients (apps) for years. So I openly admit to being biased. As I previously posted deleting the account and re entering it is a little drastic but a simple process. If you have no success with the great suggestions you have been given and get to the suggestion of rebuilding the mailbox or even more drastic reinstalling the operating system then deleting and re entering the account is much the same and certainly simpler than a OS reinstall.
Alternatively you might like to try a different email app just as a process of elimination. If a different email app works then you have narrowed the problem down to Mail or its settings. eg Mozilla Thunderbird which is free.

 

[poppi]

Many thanks for all the suggestions. I have tried many of them including deleting all messages from both Mail and from the ISP account but none of them have solved the problem. Having said that I have a vague recollection from quite some time ago and I think this was a Mail problem of deleting the application and reinstalling the program and I THINK it solved the problem but I don't remember how I did it. Can someone walk me through the steps to do that. I see that there were some cautions but I have no fear of losing all the existing emails.

Thank you

poppi

 

[krs]

Poppi -

From your first post it sounds as if everything wasworking fine until the 6th or 7th of May.

Can your wife remember anything that was changed or added or modified on your iMac in that time frame?

Things don't just stop working for no reason.

Randy put a very good list to go through in post 10 - did you try all those?

Last time I had a similar problem with my ISP and Apple Mail, I think one setting waschanged on the "advanced" page I posted.
Does your ISP really have nobody in their support group that knows Apple Mail and the settings required to work with their mail server?
Maybe call them back and insist tp speak to someone who is familiar with Macs.

 

[poppi]

Poppi -

From your first post it sounds as if everything wasworking fine until the 6th or 7th of May.

Can your wife remember anything that was changed or added or modified on your iMac in that time frame?

Things don't just stop working for no reason.

Randy put a very good list to go through in post 10 - did you try all those?

Last time I had a similar problem with my ISP and Apple Mail, I think one setting was changed on the "advanced" page I posted.
Does your ISP really have nobody in their support group that knows Apple Mail and the settings required to work with their mail server?
Maybe call them back and insist tp speak to someone who is familiar with Macs.

I did try many of Randy's suggestions and some of them I was unable to try, probably because the O/S an Mail program are so far behind on this ancient Mac. To answer your question, for some reason there is in her Mac Mail a mail box labeled "Bulk" which seems to be the on line equivalent of junk and she deleted all of those by highlighting all and pressing delete. She thinks the Mac Mail problem started after that but that doesn't make sense to me.

Also I looked at the Apple Mail Account Setting "Advanced" page and took a screen shot but it is so blurred it is unreadable. Also it doesn't look anything like the one you posted, again probably because of the very old software on her Mac. I did see one difference however where your port is 995 hers is 993 but this is what ATT tells me it is supposed to be.

My apologies for being so ignorant. Believe this is a stress don't need on top of this ongoing isolation. I sincerely appreciate all the help everyone is offering.

poppi

 

[krs]

I just did a search on my Mac and found the notes that solved my Apple Mail problem.
Turns out my settings are now different again, but at that time the key thing was to Unselect first tab at top - Automatically detect and maintain account settings.

What Mac do you use and what macOS?
Settings there may be different - maybe upgrading to the latest macOS you can run on your Mac will help.

 

[Rod]

Yes, my bad, I too made an assumption that the OS would be recent if not current but it now sounds as if we are talking about an "old" OS and Mail version.

 

[krs]

Poppi - Is there more than one mail account on that Mac where you have the problem.
If so make sure the correct account is chosen.

I would also verify with ATT that they didn't make an upgrade on their end or changed servers which makes their mail server incompatible with Apple Mail 4.6
Happened to me once.
I really think it's up to ATT to get your email working again.

 

[chscag]

Mail version 4.6 is ancient. Apple Mail is now at 13.4, so it's not surprising that it's no longer working.

 

[pm-r]

Mail version 4.6 is ancient. Apple Mail is now at 13.4, so it's not surprising that it's no longer working.

I believe Mac OS X version 10.6 (Snow Leopard) used Mac Mail version 4.x

But e-email client rules should still work I would think.






- Patrick
======

 

[Rod]

Well that sort of rules out re installing the OS and most other free email clients although there may be suitable Thunderbird version as per my suggestion of using another email client. Yep, quick search turned this up; Old Version of Thunderbird for Mac for Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) (Intel) Download - OldApps.com for Mac
I really think this might be worth a try even if just as an elimination exercise.