Mail takes a long time to send messages

I am having the same problem. It just spins and spins and seems like it's trying to sync folders. Mail sometimes also then alerts me that the mail wasn't sent and that I can choose another server to send that email. When I choose another server to deliver that email, it sometimes sends it twice.

My main problem is that sending mail is sooooooo slow.

Still the exact same problem here...exact same symptoms, SL 10.6.2. Has anyone been able to sort this out? TIA.

I too have the same problem. I've tried a number of small fixes, nothing works. For a long time I thought it was my server, but now I see it's snow leopard. No apparent fix as yet from Apple, it would seem.

Easy to fix

Use the "Network utility" tool in "Utilities" to use "Lookup" feature of the tool
then type in your incoming POP3 email server to get it's IP address
and do same for your outgoing SMTP email server to get it's IP address
Then go back to mail program, preferences, accounts and replace your incoming and outgoing mail servers with these ip addresses, and problem solved.

Cheers

I've been having the same problem on Snow Leopard with gmail sending via Mail. I tried the Utilities thing re the IP address, per above but it wouldn't work at all. Pretty sure I did what was suggested. Oh well... Oddly (or perhaps not) my email goes very quickly from my iPod Touch, through gmail servers.

Thanks Rico22

Fix worked perfectly for me

Cheers

I was having the same problem with slow mail and the other suggestions above were not working. I finally found something that seemed to work for me. I use IMAP with Google Mail, so not sure if this applies to non-Google Mail users.

1. Log into your Google Mail account on the Google Mail website
2. Click Settings
3. Click Forwarding and POP/IMAP
4. Under IMAP Access, click Configuration Instructions
5. Under Mail Clients click Apple Mail 3 (Leopard), even if your Mail is the later version
6. Under "10" click "recommended client settings:
7. Follow the instructions given here by making the adjustments shown while you are in your Apple Mail (Mail Preferences).

Hope this helps.

I have the exact same problem with my Macbook Pro on 10.6.3. However, on my Mac Pro on the same network, I have zero problems. Also, it seems the problem exists the first time I send an email after booting up the computer. It takes several minutes for the email to get sent. However, subsequent emails go out immediately.

this worked perfectly for me. Thanks

Does anyone know if 10.6.4 fixed this problem?

Thank you.

Has anyone found a cure for this problem yet? This started for me about three weeks ago. I have made no changes to any settings yet suddenly mail is taking 30seconds to a minute to be sent. It is driving me nuts. I have installed all updates and yet nothing has helped. Are Apple aware that this is a problem with mail - have they come up with any solution?

Had the same problem. It turned out that a missing/wrong DNS address was the cause. Check this:

1. open System Preferences and then click Network
2. on the left side list, select your internet connection (Ethernet in my case)
3. check the address in the DNS-server field. In my case, it was the local router address (greyed out)
4. To replace that address, I checked the web page of my ISP and got the correct DNS address

Hope that helps!

Message was edited by: apohl