new mail sounds often but no new mail arrives:::

Hello, and welcome to the Discussions.

How many accounts do you have in Mail on this Mac? Are you using POP, IMAP or .mac?

Ernie

I am having the same problem. It sounds every time it checks for new mail (which in my case is every minute). I have looked up different forums and nobody has a real answer for this. For your reference, I have 4 accounts: .mac, gmail (POP), another POP account and an HTTPMail account. It only started doing this since I upgraded my iTunes to the newest version.

Have you clicked to turn the small triangle beside Inbox downward, to reveal the separate Inbox for each of your accounts?

Although it would not explain this (I don't think) you should not use less than 5 min intervals to check for new mail.

I have some things for you to check when you respond on this question.

Ernie

Yes, but that has never made a difference in the past. It just randomly started happening. If you aren't supposed to use less than 5 min. intervals, then why is it an option in the preferences pane?

OK, that's great for you, but I don't have any new messages or any mail that I haven't opened and I still get the sound. It should only notify you of new mail once.

The option to go to 1 min is there, because it may work in some cases, such as when sitting in an office where the server also sits, and the connection is very fast. With several accounts, and typical broadband connection, the completion of one cycle of checking is not finished before it goes again -- this is where the problem with such a tightly spaced interval likely arises.

Assuming you have answered in the affirmative, and you have revealed all four Inboxes, may I assume none of them display as having new messages?

In the Finder, open ~/Library/Mail/one of the POP account folders, and confirm the presence of an INBOX.mbox folder? (~/ is the same as Home/, btw)

Control click over your POP account Inbox in Mail (the one not Gmail), select Get Info, and again navigate to this POP account. Do you see messages on the POP server?

Another question: do you have any Rules set up to immediately move messages as they are received?

Ernie

Ernie, I guess I don't really understand what you mean "Control click over your POP account Inbox in Mail (the one not Gmail), select Get Info, and again navigate to this POP account. Do you see messages on the POP server?"

I know how to get to the get info window, but what do you mean navigate to this POP account? I have one rule set up to auto-reply to my hotmail account.

Stan, I don't have any messages when I log in to my .mac account.

If you control-click on any mailbox, and choose Get Info, you get a window to then choose which account you want to get server info for. This is NOT the Get Info found in a Finder window. What we are checking here is the communication with the server. It doesn't work with a Gmail server, because Gmail is not true POP. With a .mac or IMAP account the Get Info will allow you to check quota and space use, as described in:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mail/2.0/en/ml1013.html

Ernie

Yes, I have messages on my server, but they are super old and I have again never had a problem with that before.

Message was edited by: Christoph7577

So is there anything else that I can do?

In Mail Preferences/Accounts/Advanced, for this POP account what have you selected about leaving messages on the server?

Ernie

I have it set to remove the messages after they have been downloaded in all of the accounts. I tell you what though, I never thought that sound would be unwelcome. I'm starting to hate the sound of new mail!!!