Can not receive email, password not accepted by server

I can confirm: for me in Belgium, the provider Scarlet has made the necessary modifications on their server side. After those changes, the Emails are being received. So the issue for me is fixed by the ISP.

This morning I noticed the POP account was working again... P&T Lux must have made the changes.

I don't know if this has been suggested already, but I read that the problem might be the length of the password. I changed mine from eleven letters to ten, and now it works like a charm! Worth a try, at least! 🙂

WoW, thank you Henriettae, that also solved my problem!!! It seems that passwords with >10chars are problematic 😟

Hi there,

my password is 9 characters long, and i still can not receive mails from one of my mail servers. It definitely has something to do with the CAPA information which ist given by the mail server. The three servers that work fine for me respond to a "telnet a.b.c.d 143" with a proper CAPA phrase. The forth server that used to work in SL and does not work in Lion does not :-( . Ubfortunately there is no way how I can make the provider of the bad server change the server behaviour. At least none I can think of... In the meantime I am using the "Software Update" function several times a day to download the long awaited fix for Lion Mail. As of today... still waiting...

I am finding this strange. My clients mail host says it's not their problem but here is what I have found.

- Some ISP's that I connect to work some don't

- Funny thing is going to web mail is the same, depends on the ISP I am using

- Doing a traceroute stops on the firewall of the host

- I wonder if multiple attempts then gets your IP blocked. Now I can't use an older version of mail from this ISP.

But then I tether and use another ISP and it works. It all started with Lion. Partly sounds like what other people are having but I'm baffled. Sounds like the mail host but they of course plead innocense and have given up helping.

Is somebody know if apple want to do something for that problem ?

It starts to get really painful!

Same here! I purchased Lion and then suddenly I can´t receive emails any more, APPLE when will you provide an update that fix the problem, this is getting really really annoying!?

Thank you for this patch file. It worked flawlessly.

What is disgusting about this is that there was a radar bug report raised about this issue well before the Lion OS went live, in fact well before even the 4th Preview release. The point here is that Apple have chosen not to deal with this issue leaving thousands of their customers without access to email through their own Mail application. What makes this worse is that it worked in Snow Leopard, so changing the way POP is dealt with and choosing not to fix their own issues when all the customers point out the issues is a total disregard for their own customer base. Asking the consumer to change the way their service providers email server works is ridiculous, I am sure that corporate Service providers are really going to listen to us telling them that their email server isn't working with Lion, they would laugh at us if we asked them to change their processes, ridiculous suport Apple, ridiculous response Apple and ridiculous attitude. I have now had no email for weeks now, thanks a bunch Apple, on the slippery road to Microsoft ****........I expected better.

I'm having the same problem and I have comcast.net for email. I would think a lot of people are on comcast's servers- if someone at Apple is watching this thread can you please ask them to check their server settings also!? THANKS

I guess it would be a lot better if Apple came out with 10.7.1. and a fix for this problem rather than informing each and every provider of a mail services on this planet to check their configuration ...

I've been fortunate that none of my primary accounts were affected. However, since this looks like its fairly common issue, I thought it may be useful to provide some background / translation on what appears to be the dominant issue after upgrading to Mail in Lion for any non-tech types interested.

From what I can tell, most people are having an issues because of a change to the way Mail authenticates with (provides login information to) the mail server. Its important to note, Apple is conforming with the specifications published by a group called the Internet Engineering Task Force. They define Internet standards which all internet software (mail clients, mail servers, web browsers, web servers...) should conform to to ensure interoperability. When any software developer, particularly one as far-reaching as Apple, changes software that interacts with other parties' software or peripherals (in this case Mail servers) the importance of all developers conforming to these standards becomes very apparent.

Since not everyone is having the exact trouble described above, you should try some basic steps before moving on to other workarounds:

+ Confirm the correct mail settings with your provider, including server address, ports, authentication type, encryption requirement, etc. These are typically available on mail provider's websites, but it may require a phone call. Apple has a great resource for collecting mail settings: Configuring Mail for your email account (Mac OS X v10.5 and later).

+ Check your Mail rules to ensure messages are not being redirected to other folders or deleted

+ Disable or uninstall any third party software that integrates with Mail.

+ Check to see if other accounts work, like those from Gmail or Hotmail. If they do and you've already confirmed your account settings, your Mail Provider's mail server probably doesn't like the way Apple Mail is providing login info.

Workarounds / Fixes:

+ Ask your Mail Provider if they support configuring your account to use the IMAP protocol. Some Mail providers allow you to switch depending on your preference. IMAP is actually a more modern standard and typically better if you have multiple devices/clients accessing the same account anyway. You will need to change some settings if this is possible; ask your mail provider for them.

+ Access your Mail using your Email Provider's webmail interface, if one is available (and 99.98% of the time, it will be). An example of this would be rather than checking your Gmail account in Apple Mail, open Safari and login at gmail.com.

+ Forward your account to another free email provider that doesn't have an issue with the way Mail authenticates (Gmail, Hotmail, AOL...). If you want to keep your original account, leave it configured in Mail so you can send from it.

+ Other email clients may still work with your Email Provider. Try Thunderbird or Sparrow.

+ If you're extremely savvy, see the directions knhor provided for changing how authentication works in Apple Mail.

+ After confirming that other accounts work, notify your Mail provider that you're having compatibility issues after upgrading to Apple Mail Version 5.0 in OS X Lion. Ask that they work with Apple to change their software to ensure compatibily.

Hope this helps for people affected by the change! Best of luck to everyone!

I'm afraid you are only stating the obvious here, not actually helping anyone solve the issue.

You mention that it is as per the RFC standards (which I am guessing you haven't actualy read), let me tell you, the way it was programmed and working in Snow Leopard was also in line and conformed with the RFC, so standards are interpeted in which ever way the dveloper feels and in this case they were interpeted in contradiction to a previous interpretation of an Apple Developer and therefore thousands of paying customers are now paying for software that dosn't work, when it did before paying for that upgrade.

The simple solution here is for Appple to write software that doesn't break what was working before and to stand up and fix its bugs when its informed about them, taking 3-4 weeks to ambly mince around without a word of an explanation to the thousands of customers it has now rendered their email client useless is nothing but incompetence.

Apple is about selling music, mp3 players, cellphones and tablets. Computers and OS are not the core of their bussines. Apple is not about computers an email applictions. My solution was to turn to Microsoft Entourage and to forget Mail and Apple. Apple is incompetence.