Apple Mail app no longer connecting to incoming mail server

After YEARS of trying to find a solution, THIS (PRAM reset) fixed it.

Whodathoughtit?

Using Mail's Connection Doctor, logins to the IMAP and SMTP servers are now quick (under 5s vs... forever spinning!), and consistently so: hitting Check Again several times confirms this.

@MikeInCanberra, THANK YOU for posting your findings. May it help many hundreds thousands millions of other Mail users!

Now, if only Mail had Snooze, Delayed Send, and integration with popular task managers, I'd be over the moon. But I'll settle for getting connected reliably. For now.

Sigh. I'm disappointed to say it only lasted a few days. That's days longer than any other attempt, but it's still not a fix.

For those of you who did a PRAM reset, can you let us know if you found it a permanent fix? Or any other solution that really, truly stuck?

Many thanks in advance.

I've tried a couple other mail clients, and while they're great in their own ways, they kinda have some significant shortfalls (yes, they sucked in parts) in other ways that mattered to me.

Apple support article.

Troubleshooting sending and receiving email messages

Occasionally I get the same behavior, especially with iCloud.

I'm having the exact problem, that is, my iPhone on a cellular signal (Like Verizon LTE) gets all IMAP mail messages perfectly, but my Mac Pro, on Time Warner cables cannot connect to the iMAP server.

However, if I connect my iPhone to my Time Warner Wireless Network, it fails. If I connect my Mac Pro to my iPhone Cellular Hotspot, IMAP works perfectly!

I tried cycling my modem and Airport Extreme router, but that didn't fix anything.

If anyone else has seen this issue, please let me know! Thanks.

I have had this same issue on off for sometime with iCloud on both my macbook Air and my iMac

A little about my setup

I have an adsl router (Billion) than my iMac connects directly via ethernet.

I also have 2 Airport Extremes one acts an extender to the other. One of them also connects directly via ethernet to the adsl router.

My macbook air connects to via the Airport Extremes Wirelessly.

I have 2 iCloud accounts that are setup on all my devices.

From time to time 1 of the iCloud accounts gets the little triangle warning sign next to it saying it can't connect to p07 blah blah.me etc etc

However the other account still connects without issue.

The iCloud account setup on my iPhone still continues to connect without issue if I use my cell phone provider and not wifi... however if I connect to wifi I get a connection issue on the exact same account as my macbook air and iMac.

In the past I have found the quickest road to home is power cycle (reboot) my adsl router this restores the connection and I am back on my way to getting mail without issue.

Today when it happened I decided to look a little deeper into the issue.

Looking deeper into my router logs I noticed in the event log I was getting blacklisted events for an ip address I cleared the blacklist on my router and like magic my iCloud mail started working again.

I will keep looking into the why its getting blacklisted but I hope this helps others who are still scratching there head as to what could be the cause of there problem... It just maybe the same as mine.

I started having this same problem yesterday after installing the Safari 7.0.6 update. This has to be a coincidence.

I have 11 email accounts setup in Apple Mail. The only one working now is my work exchange email. The rest are either accounts I host on my own OS X Mavericks Server using IMAP and SMTP over SSL except for two of them which are GMAIL and iCloud.

Same issue. The iMac just displays the warning triangle symbol and when I click I get the Unable to Connect dialog with the message.

There may be a problem with the mail server or network. Verify the settings for account “iCloud” or try again.

The server returned the error: The server “p03-imap.mail.me.com” cannot be contacted on port 993.

I have verified the settings on all of my IOS devices and they are the same. As with the original post, my IOS devices are all able to connect to all of my accounts without any problems.

To try and troubleshoot this issue I switched to another user account and tried to connect to one of my mail accounts and got the same Unable to Connect issue. I then opened another email client (Thunderbird) and configured the email account exactly the same there (IMAP on port 993 and SMTP on port 587). Thunderbird was able to connect and retrieve my mail without any problems. As an additional test I opened up terminal and tried "telnet p03-imap.mail.me.com 993". I was immediately connected to the iCloud server.

To sum up this does not appear to be a problem with the iMac, the user account, my mail server or the network. It appears to be a problem with Apple Mail only.

I wonder if there is a plist file or something that needs nuking.

I had very similar issues with Yahoo and Mac Mail, with system 10.9.5. Some combination of the following steps finally fixed the problem after about 6 hours of troubleshooting. Turning off peripherals, turning off router for a while to re-set it, deleting and re-establishing Yahoo account on Mac Internet Accounts, checking and re-entering Yahoo POP server settings in Mail (avoiding old Plus and IMAP servers), clicking "Rebuild" in Mail and unchecking "organize by conversation." And several re-boots. Throughout, my iPhone accessed Yahoo email without problem, sending and receiving. At one point, Mac Mail could send but not receive email. The turning points seemed to be the peripherals off (after which I could send email) and the router reset (after which a few emails came in, but not most). After more more tinkering it began to pull in all the old incoming emails. I can't offer anyone much advice, but perhaps something in my experience will help you overcome this scary problem! chris hoh

I found a solution to the issue I was having with apple mail.

I think it has something to do with the feature that retrieves your mail while the computer is asleep. My guess is that apple stores your email account details in parameter ram (PRAM) so it can check accounts without waking the Operating System.

I have encountered the mail retrieval issue twice now and both times I have been able to fix it by resetting the PRAM. For most apple computers this can be done by shutting down your mac and powering it back on, then hold down the Command + Option + P + R keys at the same time. Wait until you hear the startup chime for the second time, then release the keys and let your mac boot normally. If this key combination doesn't work for your mac you may need to search for "reset pram your mac model" to find out the correct way for your mac.

This did it for me

After years without issues Mail.app suddenly didn't connect to any server this morning, though it says in the connection doctor that it's still connected to the Internet.

The PRAM reset solved my problem! I didn't use this reset for years and even thought that it wasn't needed anymore. But it seems that it's still to keep in mind in certain cases.

The computer in question is usually awake 24/24, but fell asleep this night.

That seems to affirm you guess, MikeInCanberra. Thank you very much!

Well done. Worked for me as well after many other failed "solutions". Wouldn't have guessed a PRAM reset would do it but live and learn. Basic troubleshooting guide: reboot, repair permissions, reset PRAM, etc.