yairz

Q: Mail constantly downloading messages

Hi all,

 

I've recently performed a clean install of OS X El Capitan on my mid 2102 Macbook Pro (Non Retina) and restored on to it my user folder and settings from before the installation (I was running the latest update of OS X Yosemite).

Since then, I have experienced an issue where Mail constantly lists in its activity that it's downloading messages.

The amount of message varies from time to time and would range between 1,000 to 100,000 messages.

This issue occurs several times every hour.

Obviously, I don't get more than a 1,000 messages every few minutes and the size of the files on my disk stays the same, so these are definitely the same messages Mail had already downloaded when I initially performed the account setup.

 

The reason this bothers me is that it slows down the performance of my Mac, especially when working in Mail (which is one of my top 3 apps in OS X).

In addition, it severely drains the battery.

 

I've seen several posts with no solution that helped me fixed the issue.

I tried to disable and enable the account and I've also tried to recreate the account.

I tried to follow the steps provided at http://www.needhelp4mac.com/2015/10/troubleshooting-apple-mail-in-os-x-10-11-el- capitan/ which I saw posted in a similar thread - Mail constantly downloading messages | How to reset Mail?

However, all of these steps did not solve my issue.

My account type is an Exchange account and I'm running the latest 10.11.1 update.

 

If anyone has any other idea of something I could try, please let me know.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Yair.

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1)

Posted on Nov 17, 2015 2:50 AM

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Q: Mail constantly downloading messages

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  • by John Strung,

    John Strung John Strung Jan 19, 2016 1:35 PM in response to tyeman83
    Level 6 (13,440 points)
    Jan 19, 2016 1:35 PM in response to tyeman83

    Me too. And the strange thing is that I have about ten different e-mail accounts. The only one causing a problem is one GoDaddy account. I have 6 or 7 other GoDaddy and Gmail accounts that don't have this problem. The problem occurred only after upgrading to El Capitan.

  • by ea711,

    ea711 ea711 Jan 19, 2016 2:13 PM in response to John Strung
    Level 1 (5 points)
    Jan 19, 2016 2:13 PM in response to John Strung

    I am probably going to jinx myself, but my Mac Mail has not re-downloaded any messages for the last several days, so my problem may be fixed.  Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly what may have fixed it, but I can tell you the steps I took (that I can remember):

     

    1. I cleaned up my IMAP and Exchange accounts.  Outside of Mac Mail, I went into my IMAP accounts via Webmail and my Exchange accounts at work and deleted my trashed messages, drafts, junk, ect.  Deleted old or unused folders.  Archived old messages to the extent possible. Really you should be doing these things anyway. 

     

    2. I did some crazy toggle of a Mail setting that I read about.  I opened Mail, went to the the Mail menu - Preferences - Accounts.  Selected one of my accounts.  Unchecked the box for "Automatically detect and maintain account settings."  Close Preferences.  Quit Mail (not just the red x, actually go to the Mail menu - Quit Mail).  Reopened mail.  Went back and re-check the box I had just unchecked.  Quit mail, then reopen it.  I did this for all of my accounts. Tedious I know.

     

    3.  In Mail I went to Mailbox menu, then to Synchronize and selected each of my accounts.

     

    When it did re-download thousands of emails for the final time, I sat there and watched it.  I didn't close Mail, and I didn't let the monitor turn off or the computer fall asleep.  I know it could be total coincidence, but I haven't had the problem since.

  • by figante,

    figante figante Jan 20, 2016 1:09 AM in response to tyeman83
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Jan 20, 2016 1:09 AM in response to tyeman83

    I can confirm that the problem is still there in 10.11.3...

  • by tyeman83,

    tyeman83 tyeman83 Jan 20, 2016 6:52 AM in response to figante
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 20, 2016 6:52 AM in response to figante

    Do Apple techs and engineers ever visit these pages to see that there are some major issues going on with their Mail program?   I'm wondering if Godaddy will do something about it.  If everyone out there like me has their computer downloading close to 40GB per day of email constantly, they may start to wonder why massive amounts of bandwidth are constantly re-downloading.

  • by Stuart Luff,

    Stuart Luff Stuart Luff Jan 20, 2016 7:51 AM in response to yairz
    Level 1 (61 points)
    Jan 20, 2016 7:51 AM in response to yairz

    Quit Mail.

     

    Go to Library (hold down alt in the 'Go' menu in Finder)

    then find the 'Mail' folder > V3 > MailData and move the 3 files that start with 'Envelope' to your desktop.

     

    Restart Mail. It will begin to Import your messages as before. This can take a while and even look like its stopped sometimes. Give it time it will eventually finish and then once its done you should see its stopped downloading/retrieving messages. If all is well delete the 3 files from your desktop.

     

    Doing this essentially rebuilds the database by forcing Mail to reimport everything.

  • by tyeman83,

    tyeman83 tyeman83 Jan 20, 2016 11:21 AM in response to Stuart Luff
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 20, 2016 11:21 AM in response to Stuart Luff

    I've already done that process once to no avail.  I've honestly tried most of the fixes going around currently.  I'll give it another shot though just to see.

  • by Stuart Luff,

    Stuart Luff Stuart Luff Jan 20, 2016 11:44 AM in response to tyeman83
    Level 1 (61 points)
    Jan 20, 2016 11:44 AM in response to tyeman83

    I saw the V2 folder mentioned but not V3. El Cap uses V3 mail folder. If you change anything in v2 it won't affect anything As it upgrades to v3 when you first start mail in el cap. Give it ago. If you've done it already then fair play. Doing what I said worked for me. Can't say it will work for everyone though unfortunately.

  • by tyeman83,

    tyeman83 tyeman83 Jan 20, 2016 11:48 AM in response to Stuart Luff
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 20, 2016 11:48 AM in response to Stuart Luff

    I think you may be right, I believe it was the V2 folder.   The V3 looked different than the last instructions I followed.   So far I did it and now its slowly plucking away at downloading my tens of thousands of emails.   I'll keep you posted if I have success tomorrow.  Thank you for the tip.

  • by yairz,

    yairz yairz Jan 20, 2016 1:14 PM in response to tyeman83
    Level 1 (7 points)
    Jan 20, 2016 1:14 PM in response to tyeman83

    ive already done this with the V3 folder more than once.

    It does not change a thing.

    Thanks

    Yair

  • by John Strung,

    John Strung John Strung Jan 20, 2016 5:40 PM in response to yairz
    Level 6 (13,440 points)
    Jan 20, 2016 5:40 PM in response to yairz

    I think I may have my problem fixed, but I did a whole bunch of things so I can't say for sure what exactly fixed it.

     

    What I did was, I deleted ALL my e-mail accounts, not just the problematical one.  Then I deleted the V2 and V3 folders. Then I did a Spotlight search for "mail" and included system files. I then deleted all mail plists and caches.

     

    I then empty the trash, restarted and recreated all my e-mail accounts for scratch, one by one.

     

    Also, I changed Check for New Message, which had been set to every 5 minutes, to "manually" and turned on IDLE command on all accounts.

     

    So far, so good.

  • by wes dorman,

    wes dorman wes dorman Jan 21, 2016 11:14 AM in response to yairz
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 21, 2016 11:14 AM in response to yairz

    I just want to share, I have exactly this problem.  Have been trying to solver for months.  I have two Gmail accounts and one iCloud account.  I'm presuming it is one of the Gmail accounts causing the problem.

     

    Plan on trying some of the ideas here, in particular John Strungs solution.

     

    What I hate is this issue while using WiFi during airline flights... just suck bandwidth, and I believe the airline provider then notices heavy use and then throttles my connection.  have notice WiFi on airline is fast at the beginning, but later in the flight my connection *****! 

     

    wes

  • by tyeman83,

    tyeman83 tyeman83 Jan 21, 2016 11:19 AM in response to wes dorman
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 21, 2016 11:19 AM in response to wes dorman

    I can confidently now state, that none of the solutions have solved the problem for me yet.  I'm not sure what to do at this point.  Considering signing up for Office 365 to use Outlook on my mac if I can't get this sorted out in the next few days.

  • by restarter3,

    restarter3 restarter3 Jan 21, 2016 1:25 PM in response to tyeman83
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Jan 21, 2016 1:25 PM in response to tyeman83

    tried everything myself no luck. i have a .me account, gmail and go daddy accounts. 10.11.2

  • by mawhyte,

    mawhyte mawhyte Jan 23, 2016 11:23 PM in response to restarter3
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 23, 2016 11:23 PM in response to restarter3

    Same problem - constant 'Downloading Messages' but the numbers do not change.  As of now, some 8,000 messages claim to be waiting to downloaded but they never come.  My problem is that I am in Uganda for the next few weeks and have a very limited network access.  The re-boot took many hours and I have neither time nor airtime enough to do it again.  My guess is that this is an Echange/Mail issue that will have to be worked on when I am back in office. 

     

    But surely it should be possible to correct Mail behaviour without a reboot???


    The problem seems only to be connected to my Exchange account and started after a clean install when my MTN dongle software conflicted with El Capitan and crashed my MacBook (another story). 

  • by maksoud,

    maksoud maksoud Jan 24, 2016 7:00 AM in response to ea711
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Jan 24, 2016 7:00 AM in response to ea711

    I have the same problem but only with my GoDaddy email account. I wonder if this has something to do with the GoDaddy's server itself rather than the app

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