WebSailor

Q: Mail "Account already exists"

I have two accounts in Mail 9.0, an iCloud (IMAP) account and a Telus (Pop) account.   I want to migrate a third Telus IMAP account from Thunderbird to Mail.  When I try to add an account and put in my Telus email address and password for that account it says "the account already exists".  However It doesn't show up in System Preferences > Internet Accounts or anywhere else I can spot.

 

I have seen suggestions in other threads to delete the SMTP settings as a solution and re-enter but this would affect the other Telus account that uses the same SMTP setting.

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11), 8 GB ram, SSD + 1TB, i5

Posted on Oct 16, 2015 4:53 PM

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Q: Mail "Account already exists"

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  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Oct 16, 2015 6:34 PM in response to WebSailor
    Level 10 (208,000 points)
    Applications
    Oct 16, 2015 6:34 PM in response to WebSailor

    Please log out or restart the computer, then open the Internet Accounts preference pane and see whether the account is listed.

  • by WebSailor,

    WebSailor WebSailor Oct 16, 2015 6:42 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 2 (310 points)
    Oct 16, 2015 6:42 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Thanks for responding Linc,

     

    Unfortunately this has had no effect.  I have tried this previously today and this email account has never shown up in Internet Accounts.  I have found I can create the new account if logged into the Guest Account and it immediately retrieves all existing mail on the Telus server but there is something in my "normal" account that is lingering and interfering.  I have Calendar emailing to this account (in Thunderbird at the present) when an event is due so I thought maybe having that email address "known" there was the issue but I can't see where I can even set that in Calendar (may have been configured in the old iCal).  I have tried deleting the Calendar and a remaining iCal preference file but no joy.

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Oct 16, 2015 7:40 PM in response to WebSailor
    Level 10 (208,000 points)
    Applications
    Oct 16, 2015 7:40 PM in response to WebSailor

    You can't create a new account with the same address as an existing one. Move all the messages in the POP account to new "On My Mac" mailboxes, then delete the account. You should then be able to add the IMAP account. If the messages download as expected, you can delete the "On My Mac" mailboxes.

  • by WebSailor,

    WebSailor WebSailor Oct 16, 2015 8:09 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 2 (310 points)
    Oct 16, 2015 8:09 PM in response to Linc Davis

    Thanks again Linc,

     

    Sorry I didn't make myself clearer.  In Mail, I have two existing accounts    name@icloud.com (IMAP) and anothername@telus.net  (a POP account)  These have worked for years.   In Thunderbird, I have a third account, yetanothername@telus.net (which is an IMAP account).  It is this last one that I am trying to set up in Mail.   If I go to enter yetanothername@telus.net and put in the password, it tells me that account is in use.   I have never used that account with Mail before.   I do have two AppleIDs unfortunately.  One of them is that last email address and the other one is name@mac.com which is what I use for iCloud.

     

    Something else in my user account seems to have a hold on yetanothername@telus.net    (Not the real account names used here of course.)

  • by Linc Davis,Helpful

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Oct 16, 2015 10:42 PM in response to WebSailor
    Level 10 (208,000 points)
    Applications
    Oct 16, 2015 10:42 PM in response to WebSailor

    I don't use Thunderbird and I don't know what it does. What happens if you delete the account in Thunderbird and then add it in Internet Accounts?

  • by WebSailor,

    WebSailor WebSailor Oct 16, 2015 10:42 PM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 2 (310 points)
    Oct 16, 2015 10:42 PM in response to Linc Davis

    I am not sure I would want to delete the Thunderbird account before I get the Mail replacement working.  Then I could be stuck with no access to that account at all.   I suppose I could clone the drive, delete the account and see if that helps and if not, just clone it all back.   A good thing to try perhaps.

  • by Linc Davis,

    Linc Davis Linc Davis Oct 17, 2015 6:48 AM in response to WebSailor
    Level 10 (208,000 points)
    Applications
    Oct 17, 2015 6:48 AM in response to WebSailor

    Deleting an IMAP account should not be a problem, because the messages are stored on the server. You're going to have to download them all again anyway.

  • by Glenn Leblanc,

    Glenn Leblanc Glenn Leblanc Oct 17, 2015 7:16 AM in response to WebSailor
    Level 6 (11,021 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 17, 2015 7:16 AM in response to WebSailor

    You should be able to access those accounts from webmail. So you should have access to them even if you delete them from all mail applications.

    Just be sure to have a backup, especially if you have POP accounts where mail is stored locally on the computer.

     

    You also indicated that you have a telus POP account in Mail. Note that El Capitan seems to have changed POP accounts to IMAP. You might check that out also. What you might do is remove all Telus accounts from Mail completely. Then try resetting them up.

     

    As Linc said, you can't have 2 accounts setup from the same provider unless they have different logins. To see if they are interfering with each other, disable (not remove) the first Telus account in Mail via Mail's preferences before setting up the second account.

  • by WebSailor,

    WebSailor WebSailor Oct 17, 2015 8:23 AM in response to Linc Davis
    Level 2 (310 points)
    Oct 17, 2015 8:23 AM in response to Linc Davis

    Right, I wasn't concerned about those.  I was just concerned about the whole Thunderbird setup if I couldn't still get Mail going with that account and had to get Thunderbird setup again to carry on in the long term.   In any case, I will be attempting all this today and will let you know if removing Thunderbird was the key.

  • by WebSailor,

    WebSailor WebSailor Oct 17, 2015 8:28 AM in response to Glenn Leblanc
    Level 2 (310 points)
    Oct 17, 2015 8:28 AM in response to Glenn Leblanc

    Glenn, thanks for your thoughts.  All the help is appreciated.

     

    Yes, webmail would certainly be a short term solution but I wouldn't want to be doing that going forward.

     

    According to my Mail preferences that existing Telus account there is still a POP account and using the POP server for incoming email.

     

    And as I have said before, the two Telus accounts have completely different logins.

  • by Glenn Leblanc,Helpful

    Glenn Leblanc Glenn Leblanc Oct 17, 2015 10:16 AM in response to WebSailor
    Level 6 (11,021 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 17, 2015 10:16 AM in response to WebSailor

    Since they have different logins, then it shouldn't be a problem. But since apple has changed the way authentication take place with mail accounts, I'm not sure if there would be a conflict.

    What you might try doing is setting up both accounts in another user (not just the one) and see if you are successful there. At least that would rule out that possibility.

    Also, it seems apple is defaulting all new accounts to be setup as IMAP. If you want to use POP, choose Other account, and put the wrong information in either the user  or password field, or both. That will bring up a window where you can select different options.

  • by WebSailor,

    WebSailor WebSailor Oct 17, 2015 10:29 AM in response to Glenn Leblanc
    Level 2 (310 points)
    Oct 17, 2015 10:29 AM in response to Glenn Leblanc

    This morning I cloned my drives to an external drive's partitions and wiped out all traces of Thunderbird, the application, the preferences and all the other instances in the user Library I could find with "Easyfind".  I then tried to set up Mail for that account and got the same "account exists" message so I am pretty sure it is not the existence of that account in Thunderbird that is at fault.   I have now cloned back from the external to my internals to restore my original setup.

     

    Your suggestion to try another user account to set up both Telus email accounts I'm Mail is a good one.  I had previously been able to set up the disputed account in the Guest account, but of course, the other Telus account had not been set up there.  So this is definitely worth doing.  Also I can experiment with the order of setting up these two accounts there to see if that has a bearing.

     

    As to your suggestion to put in the wrong user or password info to get farther in,  I tried that and it wouldn't let me get any farther.  It just told me "unable to verify account name or password".

  • by Glenn Leblanc,Solvedanswer

    Glenn Leblanc Glenn Leblanc Oct 17, 2015 10:42 AM in response to WebSailor
    Level 6 (11,021 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 17, 2015 10:42 AM in response to WebSailor

    "As to your suggestion to put in the wrong user or password info to get farther in,  I tried that and it wouldn't let me get any farther.  It just told me "unable to verify account name or password"."

    Strange. It should work either from adding in Mail or Internet Accounts. Choose to add other mail account (last in the list). I type a letter or anything in both fields to enable the Sign In tab to become active and get this:

    Screen Shot 2015-10-17 at 12.39.16 PM.png

    Can't imagine why that won't work for you.

     

    Post back when you try the another user account again.

  • by WebSailor,

    WebSailor WebSailor Oct 17, 2015 11:06 AM in response to Glenn Leblanc
    Level 2 (310 points)
    Oct 17, 2015 11:06 AM in response to Glenn Leblanc

    Glenn and Linc,

     

    I think I have it working now.  I was incomplete when I reported I could get no farther when I put in an incorrect username/password.  I just got distracted when I saw the message "Unable to verify account name or password" and gave up that path.  I was then able to correct my username/password and click on the "Sign In" button again and it then took me to a box asking me to choose the applications I wanted to use with that account (Mail and Notes offered).  I checked off Mail only and at that point it appeared that another account simply named "Telus" appeared in the sidebar but with an exclamation mark icon next to it and I couldn't seem to get past the open dialog box that asked me to pick the applications I wanted.

     

    At this point I remembered Linc's advice and went to System Preferences > Internet Accounts and found the new Telus account now showing up there.  I deleted the account here and shut down the iMac.  Then I restarted and began the process again.   This time I got all the way into setting up the new account in Mail and after selecting the application I wanted to use for that account, it showed the "Telus" account in the sidebar but with no exclamation mark and it also brought in my existing mail from the server.  I still had the "choose application" dialog box open on the screen and hitting the "next" button there seemed to do nothing, so I hit the "cancel" button to remove it.  As far as I can tell both the new IMAP Telus account and the previous other POP Telus account are now working properly.

     

    And I have renamed this new account from the vague "Telus" to something more meaningful to me.

     

    So I never got to trying any of this in another user account, but it appears now that this won't be necessary.

     

    Thank you both, Glenn and Linc, for the suggestions that got me past this difficulty.

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