Mac Mail - unable to establish accounts

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Mac Mail - unable to establish accounts

I have 2 MBPs (13" & 17") both running High Sierra 13.6. and Mail v11.5 (3445.9.5) and have had a LOT of problems in the last 9 months trying to establish Mail accounts for Earthlink & Gmail on them. I had no problems when they were both POP accounts, but read that IMAP accounts work better when managing mail over several devices. I have inquired on these forums in the past without any resolution.

I have been successful in converting all my POP accounts on both mail servers for my MBP 17", my iPadPro, my iPhone 7, and my Mac Mini running Catalina. They all work(ed) great. But I could NEVER establish an IMAP account for Earthlink on my 13" MBP! Then as time went on, each of the other IMAP accounts on both the MBPs have gone offline with no resolution for at least a month! I have to read/work my mail from the 2 respective servers on line and in both cases the UID/PW works in those instances.

Connection Doctor repeatedly fails to establish a connection any more on either account for either incoming (IMAP) or outgoing SMTP servers. from these 2 MBPs. Then I thought to switch to using Mozilla's Thunderbird on both and it worked fine for a week on the 13" and then started doing the same thing, and I could NEVER get one established on the 17"!

When I have the IMAP acct established on the MBPs they just won't go online and connect with the respective servers. In the cases where I don't have an IMAP account established (Thunderbird) it's because they won't establish!

I was thinking I had a problem with 'Mail' and I din't know how to reload a fresh copy. but when I tried Thunderbird instead, I experienced the same problem! Now I can only presume I have some sort of Mail (or Thunderbird) related problem with High Sierra!

Do these symptoms ring a bell for anyone? I think I am out of options.

Brian

MacBook Pro 17", OS X 10.11

Posted on Apr 10, 2020 1:34 PM

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Answer 1

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BDAqua

Level 10

238,829 points

Apr 10, 2020 4:26 PM in response to bdphourde

Hi Brian,

Hi, have you changed your eMail password lately?

Works sometimes even if you haven’t

Open Keychain Access in Utilities, then either check the Password under that item, change it, or delete it and start over.

Enter the part after the @sign in the search bar.

You may have duplicate or more entries in Keychain Access.

If using a browser to login via WebMail works it's not Name or Password, but likely old passwords interfering.

There''ll be at least 2 entries, maybe more.

The trouble is that Mac Mail almost always chooses the old Passwords if you don't change or get rid of the old ones.

Restart to clear some caches.

Are these the Earthlink setting you used?

EarthLink along with ix.netcom.com customers can use the following IMAP settings:

Incoming Mail Server: imap.earthlink.net
Incoming Port Number: 143
Outgoing Mail Server:smtpauth.earthlink.net
Outgoing Port Number: 587

MindSpring Domain Customers can use the following IMAP settings: (Note: The EarthLink settings will work for MindSpring domain names as well.)

Incoming Mail Server: imap.mindspring.com
Incoming Port Number: 143
Outgoing Mail Server:smtpauth.earthlink.net
Outgoing Port Number: 587

PeoplePC Customers can use the following IMAP settings

Incoming Mail Server: imap.peoplepc.com
Incoming Port Number: 143
Outgoing Mail Server:smtpauth.peoplepc.com
Outgoing Port Number: 587

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Answer 2

Apr 13, 2020 12:45 PM in response to BDAqua

Same thing happened to me on earthlink account, as of yesterday I could not send or receive emails. I removed the account and tried to reestablish with password but keeps spinning. my Mac running Catalina will not allow me to add earthlink account. Keeps spinning. Is there anyway to manually establish the account using incoming and outgoing server information

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

238,829 points

Apr 13, 2020 2:01 PM in response to mildred259

This may still work...

Go through setting everything up to a Fake Server, none of the Apple choices, replace the part after the @ sign with like @fakeserver.net when setting up this fake account, use all the right ports authentication, & passwords, wait for mail to say it failed do you want to save this account anyway, say yes, then you can go back in & edit the 2 servers to Eearthlink.com or whatever instead of @fakeserver.net

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Mac Mail - unable to establish accounts

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