lipwak

Q: El Capitan killed my Gmail pop setup

Hi,

 

I had my Gmail set up as POP before I upgraded to El Capitan. Since upgrading, the mail program hasn't been able to access my Gmail POP account. The IMAP accounts I have at Gmail and the others elsewhere, IMAP and POP, work fine.

 

I'd rather not have an IMAP account. I hate that it downloads mail without my checking it first. I use either the Gmail website or a menubar app called Mail Tab to check my mail before i download it. I don't get much spam but the last line of defense is checking it before I download it, thus the POP setup.

 

Mail assumes you want to set up an IMAP account when you set up a Gmail account in it. There is a way to get it to let you choose POP but so far, I'm not getting it to work. I keep getting an "unable to verify account name or password" message from the Mail Internet Account pane. I tried setting up a new account but continued to get that message. There was talk about using the control key to get Mail to give me a "Next" button instead of assuming I want to set up an IMAP account but I am not getting that to work either.

 

I have things properly setup at Gmail. It all worked before I upgraded to 10.11.

 

So, any ideas on how I get POP to work for Gmail would be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

 

Cheers,

 

John L

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Sep 30, 2015 2:30 PM

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Q: El Capitan killed my Gmail pop setup

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  • by Ju69,

    Ju69 Ju69 Oct 2, 2015 12:20 AM in response to davidcotter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 12:20 AM in response to davidcotter

    It' works!

    Thx.

  • by vinodlunked,

    vinodlunked vinodlunked Oct 2, 2015 5:46 AM in response to lipwak
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 5:46 AM in response to lipwak

    hi, can you pl help me with the same issue on my google app account

  • by Jeremy Knowles,

    Jeremy Knowles Jeremy Knowles Oct 2, 2015 5:48 AM in response to davidcotter
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 5:48 AM in response to davidcotter

    Thanks for this post David.

     

    I have now resolved my problem - unable to send out email from mail through my pop gmail account.

     

    I have had to change settings in mail preferences to allow authorisation on outgoing mail which wasn't required previously.

     

    Mail Preferences > Account information > Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) > Edit SMTP server list > highlight smtp.gmail.com > click advanced > Authentication change from none to password

  • by Jeremy Knowles,

    Jeremy Knowles Jeremy Knowles Oct 2, 2015 5:57 AM in response to icemantx
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 5:57 AM in response to icemantx

    Hi

     

    Prior to this update my mail did not require authentication to send out emails through my pop 3 gmail account. I wasn't getting the same error message as you but going into mail preferences and selecting account authorisation and entering my password for outgoing mail seems to have resolved my problem.

  • by OneManHiking,

    OneManHiking OneManHiking Oct 2, 2015 10:04 AM in response to Jeremy Knowles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 10:04 AM in response to Jeremy Knowles

    I found that use SSL option had been defaulted to on.

     

    I was able to solve the problem by not using the connection setup wizard and solely using the Accounts tab under Preferences which allows you to view and edit a much wider set of settings under the advanced tab.

  • by Kaa,

    Kaa Kaa Oct 2, 2015 10:38 AM in response to lipwak
    Level 1 (10 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 2, 2015 10:38 AM in response to lipwak

    I'm having similar issues. I had all my gmail accounts set up as POP, but now all of them are IMAP, and it immediately started trying to download several tens of thousands of emails without asking me. Emails it HAS ALREADY DOWNLOADED when it was POP. And it created a bunch of folders I don't want. It has completely screwed up my mail. I just want things back the way they were.

     

    Is there any way to fix the issue? Not just 'allow gmail to connect' but to get mail to return me to my previous setup? I don't have a problem with having to enter passwords as long as I'm in CONTROL, and not some upstart app who thinks it knows what I want better than I do.

  • by lipwak,

    lipwak lipwak Oct 2, 2015 10:54 AM in response to Kaa
    Level 1 (109 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 2, 2015 10:54 AM in response to Kaa

    Kaa, Sounds like you went through what I went through. The "allow less secure apps" setting on Google's site, that David Cotter suggested, should allow POP again.

     

    I had both an IMAP and POP account set up for the problem account so I just made the IMAP one inactive and all was right with the world, although I did have to delete the unwanted empty folders/mailboxes for deleted mail and some other categories that were created for the IMAP account, as well as delete all that old re-downloaded mail. If you don't have your old POP account still sitting there inactive, you'll have to create a new one, or change over the current one to POP. I'll leave that to others to tell you how to do.

     

    Good luck. There's hope.

  • by Goroddy,

    Goroddy Goroddy Oct 2, 2015 3:17 PM in response to Jeremy Knowles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 3:17 PM in response to Jeremy Knowles

    This worked for me! Thanks

  • by JA Sterling,

    JA Sterling JA Sterling Oct 2, 2015 3:26 PM in response to lipwak
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 2, 2015 3:26 PM in response to lipwak

    This one did it...fixed my wifes as well.

     

    Have been having this trouble with hers for the last three upgrades.

     

    Go figure.

  • by CAH5B,

    CAH5B CAH5B Oct 5, 2015 11:16 AM in response to lipwak
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 5, 2015 11:16 AM in response to lipwak

    I had 2 Stage Authentication set up for G Mail, using POP3. This meant that I was unable to see the option to "Allow Less Secure Apps." I turned off 2 stage authentication and was then able to see the option. It was already set. I received e mails from G mail to say that I had switched off 2 stage authentication and that I had now Allowed Less Secure Apps. Doing this solved the problem of having the password rejected in Mail.

  • by JayceeJC,

    JayceeJC JayceeJC Oct 5, 2015 2:47 PM in response to lipwak
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 5, 2015 2:47 PM in response to lipwak

    I had the same problem with my POP Gmail and was able to fix it in a slightly different way – I have 2-step verification active, so the "Allow less secure apps" switch was not visible under sign-in & security.

     

    Instead I selected "App passwords", and generated a new app-specific password. When I entered that new password into Mail, the POP account worked as before. (I suspect that the OS update meant that Gmail no longer recognized my Mac as the same device, so a new password was needed.) This may be preferable for people who don't want to change their security settings.

     

    One annoyance, however: messages in my Gmail inbox were not preserved from before the system update, and after activation it only downloaded mail from the last several hours. This meant that numerous older emails I'd been keeping in my Inbox as a reminder disappeared from Mail.

     

    I was able to retrieve a copy of the pre-upgrade Inbox from my Time Machine backup, and the messages still exist on the Gmail server, so nothing was permanently lost. But for anyone with a POP Gmail account who hasn't upgraded yet, I'd recommend moving any messages in the Inbox into a local mailbox before upgrading, to avoid the frustration.

  • by Diegmarin,

    Diegmarin Diegmarin Oct 6, 2015 1:31 PM in response to Jeremy Knowles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 6, 2015 1:31 PM in response to Jeremy Knowles

    Works for me. Thanks!!

  • by danton09,

    danton09 danton09 Oct 8, 2015 8:14 AM in response to davidcotter
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Oct 8, 2015 8:14 AM in response to davidcotter

    Works! may thanks.

  • by chefpeon,

    chefpeon chefpeon Oct 8, 2015 9:36 AM in response to lipwak
    Level 1 (0 points)
    iPhone
    Oct 8, 2015 9:36 AM in response to lipwak

    After installing El Capitan, I had the same problem with Apple Mail not recognizing my gmail password either. After reading this thread, I set my gmail to allow less secure apps, and that fixed it, although I also experienced the massive email download of thousands of old emails and it was a giant pain in the *** to delete all of them after I had to go through them and pick the mail I wanted to keep.

     

    However I don't think turning on the "allow less secure apps" feature is much of a "fix", because I'm not wild about making ANYTHING less secure in this day and age. I hope there's a fix and I can switch that feature back off again.

  • by orbitalpunk,

    orbitalpunk orbitalpunk Oct 8, 2015 9:48 AM in response to lipwak
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Oct 8, 2015 9:48 AM in response to lipwak

    I didn't have to turn on Allow Less Secure Apps to get POP to work. I just added the account with the wrong password to force it to give me more options so I could set it to a POP account and add the POP server. In Gmail I use 2 factor authentication and generated a App Specific Password for Mail. I did this for 5 gmail accounts. Allow Less Secure Apps is not even an available option for me since I have 2 Factor Authentication turned on.

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