Help with e-mail getting stuck in Mail outbox

Question

Level 1

2 points

Help with e-mail getting stuck in Mail outbox

I recently ran into a problem where all the e-mails I tried to send in Mail got stuck in my outbox and were not sent. After reading posts on the Apple Support Communities website and doing some troubleshooting of my own within Mail, I reached a solution to the problem. When I first realized I could not send e-mail using a certain e-mail account of mine, since all e-mails were getting stuck in the outbox folder, I checked my available servers. I did this by opening the preferences window, clicking on the accounts tab, then clicking on the outgoing server pull-down menu. In the pull-down, I saw that the server I wanted to use was listed as "offline." To fix this problem and get the server back online so that I could send e-mail (as I could with my other account that was not listed as "offline"), I selected the outgoing server pull-down once again. In the menu, I selected "edit server list." On the page that pops up afterward, I highlighted the server I wanted to use. This way, I could see the information associated with the server. With this information in front of me, I realized that for some reason there was no password entered in the password field even though the "Authentication" setting was set to password. I entered my password associated with the e-mail account I was having problems with and "walla." The server was back online. I could send e-mails again without them getting stuck in the outbox!

This problem popped out all of a sudden for me and got me quite frustrated. I hope that this brief walk-through helps out some people out there having a similar issue. Best of luck!

Mail-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jun 16, 2011 12:39 AM

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Answer 1

Barsian

Level 1

4 points

May 13, 2017 11:31 PM in response to balla3

Hi, thank you very very much. Your post resolved my issue.

Oddly, although the password was correct when I went to the server but you mention it showed the dots for the older shorter password. Amended it and voilà!

Vicky

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Answer 2

bhirschi

Level 1

0 points

Nov 3, 2011 9:06 PM in response to balla3

THANK YOU! This was very helpful. The only thing I would add is that after making these changes you may need to quit Mail and restart. That is what I ahd to do to get the Outbox to finally clear out the backlog of messages that hadn't sent.

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Answer 3

Dec 17, 2012 2:15 AM in response to balla3

That's one of the best walkthrough's i've read, thankyou!

However, I often have email stuck in the out box. And that's not comfortable… or good for communicating to clients.

In the hope that this may help someone:

Internet Connection Problem

A bit random but I found that by keeping an eye on the networked computers or the Dropbox icon tells me the health of my network or the internet connection that's causing a problem and all of the time, it's the Ethernet.

If networked computers are up and on the internet, but my PM isn't:

Solution:

1) Refresh the DHCP license.

2) Switch off the ethernet under system preferences/network then switch on again to refresh the IP addres.

Every time I do this, I find Apple Mail reconnecting straight away. I don't know why this happens.

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Answer 4

Feb 18, 2013 8:47 PM in response to balla3

Your walk through for stuck mail was very helpful, my problem was also password that got changed out of the blue. I'm sending mail again. Thank you!

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Answer 5

Jul 9, 2013 2:49 PM in response to balla3

how do i get to preferences???

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Answer 6

Feb 10, 2014 12:03 PM in response to balla3

Thanks Balla. I went to Preferences in mail, checked a few things, my password was still there (in the form of xxxxx), so I turned off my computer and restarted it and they all flew out of my outbox when I signed in again.

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