Mail won't send but Connection Doctor says smtp account OK.

Aha!!! I see. Shucks. I don't suppose it would be possible to find out what it is that they did? But as far as the purging and all goes, I've done all that... several times.

Thanks for all the info. It's been a great help. And, I must say that you're not alone in this "everyone hates mac" world. Whenever I mention Mac to someone, I never get a good response. Well, unless of course they have one too. I suppose what's worse is that those same people aren't willing to learn. I guess that's what irks me the most.

Hi Ernie, thanks for the info. I must say, it's a little complicated. For the time being, my Gmail setup as an outgoing server works. Thank heaven's for that.... it might take me three weeks to get through that article! 🙂

Mick, thanks again for your input. That gave me the courage to go and talk to our computer man. I would have done this before, but he's usually swamped with all his different hats, and he knows nothing about the Mac. And, I must also add, I haven't learned enough German (I'm in the German part of Switzerland) to be able to communicate quickly. But, I did go talk to him this morning because you said that your IT guys wiggled their fingers and now it works. Come to find out, here's what happened... or well, never happened:

Around the time that this problem started, we upgraded our internet connection to a higher package... what I mean is increased bandwidth/speed. Nothing on the side of hardware was changed. The ISP only provided us with more speed/bandwidth. But, what I did discover is that the error that I found in the connection doctor is a relay problem. Our dear network brother tried his, using the same smtp that I have and he got the same problem: relaying denied. Go figure. He doesn't know what that means, but that problem showed up also for them along with the speed upgrade. This is exciting new information. Of course it doesn't fix the problem nor tell us what's really wrong. But it definitely shows that it's not a Mac problem. Good ole Mac! It does "just work".

So, through our own mail server (which I learned that we have) I'm able to use the smtp. This is better because can I can send from my original e-mail account with our smtp and it will show the correct e-mail. Of course I can still send with gmail, but the recipient sees my Gmail address and not the correct one. I hope I explained that in an intelligible way.

Perhaps Apple would do better to actually put the error message that the connection doctor can see in their dialogue box instead of just saying that mail can't send the message. I don't know.

I think so too. I still don't understand what the relaying has to do with anything. But it's probably not important for me to understand. I don't know. What is interesting is that if I login to the webmail that they have, I can send a message with no problems.

I cannot send mail via smtp.mac.com or smtp.me.com - Connection Doctor says I do have connection to the internet and other internet services are just fine == I have changed the port to custom port 587 and still nothing gets out on this laptop using Mail == this is on my laptop wirelessly connected to my network = the Mail on the network is just fine, the network is fine and I can get on the internet wirelessly = but Mail on my laptop won't send out messages == even using two .Me/.Mac accounts of mine...neither one works - and this just suddenly started ==

have you checked the file size of any attachments that you are sending?

What happens when you try to send mail (other than you can't)? Any response window/message? Some kind of rejection notice?

Is your mail server set up to prevent address spoofing? Are your mail headers correct? A reply-to: or from: address that's incorrect may be rejected.

I went into mail preferences, accounts. I cleaned out all invalid or no longer used smtp servers and that fixed the problem for me.

Telnet into the SMTP server and feed it commands manually to see what happens. If you can't do that then at least try another client before pointing fingers.

Sorry I don't understand what 'Telnet' means or, indeed, "... before pointing fingers ..."

Use a different email client. If it works, then it's Mail's fault. If it doesn't work then it's your ISP's. Not that complicated.

Ahem -- that of course assumes you know how to instruct each of them to accomplish the same task! It is not always obvious what is equivalent, but most times is.

Ernie

If you honestly can't figure out how to specify a server name, port number and login credentials in an email client's preferences then that might be the whole problem right there.

Excellent J .... you don't know what pleasure it is that I've contributed something that has helped somebody ... I generally take take take from here .... Roger