Snow leopard " MAIL" Not working

Go into Mail->Preferences->Accounts and go to the Advanced tab. There is a pop-up labeled "Authentication:" which has choices "Password" "MD5 challenge-response" "Kerberos" "Authenticated POP" and "NTLM". Apple, in their utter brilliance, decided that no one should "unknowingly" use insecure mail, so in the upgrade to 10.6 they changed all of the Authentication protocols to NTLM. But if your email provider does not do NTLM, or even if your email provider doesn't expect YOU to do NTLM, it doesn't recognize your password! Probably the right thing to change it back to is "Password". Or your mail provider should have documentation of what it should be.

You will have to set each one of your 3 email accounts (and they are not going to necessarily be the same, either!) And then, finally, go back to the "Account Information" section on the "Accounts" tab and fix each of your "Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP):" by selecting "Edit SMTP Server List" which is at the bottom of the pop-up (terrible user interface...) and that's on the Advanced section, too.

Do this account by account, and you should see incoming then outgoing mail get fixed piece by piece.

I've upgraded approx 25 machines from 10.4 or 10.5 to 10.6 in the last 3 months. The upgrade has munged this in mail on all but 2 or 3 of them. I have no idea why it doesn't always break the mail, but anyway I care more about fixing it!

Oh, and if you have more than one user login on the machine you will need to log in with the other login and repeat the fix on that user's mailbox(es).

Is each account listed separately, and do each of them have Take Offline beside them? Earlier you mentioned a message that account was Offline, did you not?

Ernie

I may be able to help if you can answer this question with a yes. Just before it went out did you try to send an email attachment that was very large? If yes I will give you instructions on what to do.

sorry that previous reply was meant for ernie.

Hi,

I am not the one with any problem -- how was the reply meant for me?

Ernie

I keep replying to the wrong person but now that i am not in such a hurry maybe i will get the right person. I just had a similar problem and fixed it but it had to do with a large attachment that i tried to send. If this happened shortly after trying to send a very large attachment let me know and i can give you directions to fix it.

Sorry to randomly pop in, but I'm actually having the exact problem you just described. Could you direct me in what to do?

SAME PROBLEM. After nearly 20 years of using Mac computers I'd declare: THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH MAIL ⚠,

I think cathy fasano (post above) has put her finger on it. Though, alas, changing the options in that dropdown menu have not yet resolved the problem.

To CONFIRM this I downloaded Thunderbird, put in my same old settings. It worked fine. But these 'same old settings,' do not work in Apple's Mail.

So I just use Thunderbird for awhile -- till Apple realizes there is a problem and fixes it -- as they most often do.

It is Unfortunate how many times we have to read and retry entering our email settings and it's easy for people to brush off the problem with this suggestion; although, for sure, if your email settings ain't right, that would be a problem; but since the exact same settings work in the Thunderbird program, having the right email settings ain't the issue.

Message was edited by: 60wpm

fotfoto wrote:
I keep replying to the wrong person but now that i am not in such a hurry maybe i will get the right person. I just had a similar problem and fixed it but it had to do with a large attachment that i tried to send. If this happened shortly after trying to send a very large attachment let me know and i can give you directions to fix it.

Mail can become hosed if you try to RECEIVE a gigantic mail message, too. You need to open Windows->Activity Monitor and Windows->Connection Doctor to see what it is doing. The activity monitor will show an incoming message whose progress bar barely moves. If it's a gigantic mail stuck in your queue with your ISP (you might even be able to see it if you go in through your email provider's web interface) then they may have to delete the message on their end.

Message was edited by: cathy fasano

The 10.6.6 update has caused havoc with mail. The problem is not with settings or anything else it is with 10.6.6 update. My work mail quit (uses Exchange) after the update on my IMac tried and tried to trouble shoot. Nothing worked. My MacBook Pro still worked fine, ran the update on it not thinking that was the cause and Bam! No more mail. Backed the update out with time machine on the laptop and all is right with the world. Can not back the update out on my IMac will lose to much data.