Exchange in Mail is sometimes in a sync loop

HI Marcel,

Try rebuilding the Mac Mailbox.

Open the Mac Mail application.

From the Menu Bar, click Mailbox/Rebuild.

In some cases, you might need to rebuild a mailbox to update the list of messages in the mailbox; for example, if messages appear to be missing or garbled, or if you can’t find all relevant messages when you search using Entire Message. Rebuilding a mailbox can take a while depending on how many messages are in the mailbox.













Carolyn 🙂

I have this problem too, have rebuilt, no go. Problem is only with native exchange mail. I kept my old IMAP exchange up just to compare, and it is not having the problem.

My company lets me use a Mac, only if I provide my own support. The downside to a problem like this is, I can't go tinkering with the Exchange server to troubleshoot.

Not the same problem, but the same solution may work. My exchange worked fine with Snow Leopard until yesterday when it just spins the Activity wheel. I had to force quit every time and it would not download or send any exchange email. My IMAP account worked fine and the app reported it was connecting to the server fine. I tried rebuilding, turning off rules but nothing helped.

But since it is exchange all the email is up on the server. So i deleted my Exchange account in the mail app, closed (had to force quit again) it then tested with just my imap. Worked fine. So i then added my exchange account back in. Everything got sucked back down successfully and appears to be working. Still a new fix so I'll post back if it breaks again.

Oh yeah, I also installed 10.6.1 this morning hoping a fix might magically appear but that did not help either.

I'm experiencing the same problem on both my iMac at home and my MacBook Air (which is my main machine at work). I know other people at my university are using Mail to access Exchange email without this issue. It's very frustrating.

A few days ago I laid waste to all my email accounts in Mail on my MBA. I then added just my university Exchange account and tried that on its own. Same problem: constantly spinning activity wheel next to my Exchange account, rarely get new mail until I quite and restart Mail, then it all appears. I've tried a Rebuilt without success. I suspect Mail is getting hung up on talking to the Exchange server and not getting time to check for new mail.

Why me‽

There's a similar discussion here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10321345#10321345

It raised the idea that this problem might be created by a "non-standard" plugin for Safari, since Mail also uses WebKit. Worth further exploration,

I was having this problem but I think I've just solved it. Essentially I had to change the automatic settings that Mail gives you if you enter an Exchange account.

Initially the settings were:

Internal Server: outlook.[university].edu.au
External Server: outlook.[university].edu.au

I checked the settings I had in Entourage and copied the "external server" address so my settings became:

Internal Server: outlook.[university].edu.au
External Server: outlook.[university].edu.au/exchange/[username]@exchange.[university].edu.au

Since doing I seem to be getting all of my Exchange mail, fingers crossed.

In the interest of adding credence to this problem, I am getting the spinning wheel as well. I don't get new mail and messages don't go out until I close Mail and then reopen. After the first mail operation, the wheel starts spinning again.

I was too hasty. The problem has returned. I have deactivated my Exchange account and returned to using Entourage, disappointed. I hope someone can shed some light on this problem or perhaps a software update may make Exchange support more robust.

Hey guys!

I was having the same issue with my exchange accounts. I then removed an add on that I had installed the other day "SignatureProfiler" and that has seemed to do the trick. I went into my mail folder and then bundles and had to delete it directly from there. I hope this helps. Best of luck to you.

I have the same problem - the sync wheel for one of the six mailboxes I have keeps spinning, even after rebuilding. The others are fine. When I go to quit mail, it locks up and I have to force quit. This started immediately after upgrading to Snow Leopard.

A follow-up. When I first start mail, all mailboxes refresh and the wheels stop. It is only after I hit the "get mail" refresh button on the tool bar that this happens. Once it starts, it won't stop, and quitting mail locks it up.

Hi All.

I am experiencing the same problem with an exchange mailbox here in our department.

It is only happening to one persons account - across three different computers (Macmini, MacBook Pro, iMac - all running 10.6.2)

The strange thing is, my personal exchange account works fine and does not have this issue when I set up my account on these machines, it only affects the particular user. In alot of these threads I have seen suggestions about rebuilding the mailbox and repairing file permissions etc. These all apear to be focusing on the issue being a local client side problem, but my experience is the contrary. However, I have been working with the exchange system admin, and the mailbox itself has been checked for consistency, and even moved between storage clusters to eliminate a network issue. However, the mailbox itself works fine when set up in Outlook 2007 on a windows box, and even behaves reasonably well in entourage. There is something with Mail (4.2) and exchange (2007) that is not behaving itself, but only seems to affect particular exchange accounts.

His mailbox is about 1.1GB which is by no means too big for exchange to handle, and none of his folders have more than 5000 items (the recommended limit for exchange 2007).

Just thought I'd throw this into the mix to help narrow down potential causes.

Still no idea where it comes from, but I could work around it by cancelling all activities and off- / onlining the Exchange MBox.

We've had the problem with one out of 10 users and now I am actually the second. If there are any sugests what to look at or to try at the server - I could ...

As far as I can say until that point in time is, that there are no detectable issues at the server's side (not even an unsuccessful logon attempt or so) - guess it is really a problem with Mac mail. Same time we have numerous iPhones, Outlooks, OWA Users (Web), Entourages and Evolutions (Linux) running and no problem with all the others.