IMAP Issues in Mail.app - Apple can't fix.

Andy_Sp wrote:

• So I've been dealing with Apple support to try and fix on ongoing issue I have with Mac Mail.

I have multiple email accounts. A combination of Exchange and IMAP for work, clients and personal.

• All my IMAP accounts have an issue were a little triangle appears next to the email address, and this shows an error "connection to server nnnnnn on default ports timed out". This caused mail.app CPU to run at 100%+, the only solution being to CMD+Q mail.

• This occurs even occurs on Apples iCloud mail on IMAP.

• IMAP ports are all correct. Even tried toggling 'auto' on and off.

• Set up MS Outlook to use IMAP doesn't have this issue. (embarrassing that a Microsoft product works better on a Mac than an Apple product)

• Deleting the email accounts and recreating them doesn't solve the issue.

• Even deleting ~/library/mail didn't solve the issue.

•

Apple have been hopeless, blaming my machine, network and software.

Firstly "it is because you are on Big Sur, not Monterey. You need to upgrade". I reluctantly upgraded and this broke a number of apps which i rely on daily which are not yet Monterey compatible.

• Oh it's your firewall, little snitch. Uninstalled little snitch, but of course problem still occurs.

• Finally got the call escalated to engineers to whom I provide three days worth of logs from when the problem was occurring.

• Our engineers can't find anything wrong in the logs. We want you to install another instance of Monterey on another partition. Or it's your network, your router, your ISP. Anything but the mail.app

Anyone else seeing similar issues, or might be able to help solve something that Apple can't?

MacBook Pro 16" 2019

2.4 Ghz 8 Core Intel i9

32GB

AMD Radeon 5500M

Monterey 12.0.1

The go to way to resolve problem accounts is to delete them then add them back in, makes no difference Big Sur/Montery

Remove email accounts in Mail on Mac

https://support.apple.com/en-lamr/guide/mail/mlhl9eb9408c/15.0/mac/12.0

Add email accounts in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

https://support.apple.com/en-lamr/guide/mail/mail35803/mac

You can see detailed information from Connection Doctor for issues—Mail>Window>Connection Doctor>Show Detail

Use Connection Doctor in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

If you need to fall back to your previous macOS— you need a previous backup of your user data

Erase and reinstall macOS - Apple Support - https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/erase-and-reinstall-macos-mh27903/mac

How to erase your Intel-based Mac - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208496

How to reinstall macOS from macOS Recovery - https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204904

Revert your Mac to a previous macOS version
https://support.apple.com/en-lamr/guide/mac-help/mh15216/10.15/mac/10.15

I am sorry, I don't have a solution for you, but I will share my experiences in the hope they may provide some useful information. I long ago gave up on using the Apple app Mail. Over the years I have evaluated a lot of email apps and kept detailed information on an Excel spread sheet. Many of them had issues in setting them up. Others installed easily. Their import capabilities can differ. They offer different features and capabilities. Some are free and some are vastly overpriced. Some are designed to address specific needs. (For example, searches.) Some email providers (Comcast for one.) provide extensive assistance on their web sites as to how to set up accounts with various specific email apps. (Very helpful.) They are a good source to go to for assistance when you have a problem, specifically since the app must communicate with their server. I won't use Mail. I have used the free app Thunderbird for years and like it. It also has some features I like that others do not have. You can consider trying another email app for a while to see how you like it.