Q: Can not receive email, password not accepted by server

I'm afraid this is never going to be fixed as Apple don't care about the issue.

In fact Steve Jobs resigned because Lion was so bad, unfortunately he sent his email of resignation over 3 weeks ago but no-one received his email because they were all running Lion!

I'm afraid too. Apple is bigger than Exxon now. They don't need satisfied customers. I'm using Microsoft Entourage. Problem solved.

Have you actually worked with your ISP to resolve your login issues?

Have them check their logs to determine what the issue is.

As the admin of several mail servers, I am having none of the reported login issues when using IMAP in an SSL environment.

Most of the reported issues can be traced back to the loss of passwords or certs during the migration of Snow Leopard to Lion -- which requires user diliegence to resolve.

Good luck.

Hi Michel,

please read the entire discussion before you post something that does not really help.

1. This is not an IMAP issue only. POP is also affected.

2. With so many people trying to get their mail accounts to work which used to work prior to the upgrade to Lion this for sure is not an issue with lost passwords or certificates... Be sure we have all down our homework and some of us are IT pros...

3. Having the ISP to resolve the problem is like installing a new firmware in your Ferrari, then you figure out that the firmware had several bugs which result in the Ferrari driving at a max speed of 20 mph, and then you contact the local police in order to reduce overall speed limits to 20 mph to solve the problem or you ask the police to install extra windmills on the road in order to speed up your car...

Apple has a serious bug in their Lion mail client and they are supposed to fix it. And since mail is a business critical app and not some isomething-picture-tunes-management-nice-to-have ringi-dingi-thingi we are all desperately waiting for this particular fix to be released asap and not in 10.7.2 anytime this fall. Period. End of discussion.

I faced this issue on poor Internet connexion link (3G for instace) or far away from home where from time to time you can experience some network congestion.

But moving from SL to L had no impact on my Mail settings. It just changed the mail database format and that was all.

Cannot see if you have resolved this as the thread seemed to get hijacked. I came across this when trying to solve the same problem and I followed the connection doctor idea. Once in there I found that [as I knew!] that my others were working but it gave me the information that they were password rather than pop authenticated. I went to preferences and to accounts and changed the setting from pop authenticated to password and it worked straight away. If this has already been suggested I apologise!

Thank you McPezza for re-stating a solution.

Yes, the thread has been hijacked. Solutions have been offered have been seldom followed.

My Lion mail client is working perfectly against a half-dozen mail servers, including my own Apple Lion Server. No voodoo or fix required from Apple.

How dare you state that the solution is fixed and that people aren't following any steps.

The problem is simple:

Apple removed the support for Plain Password on POP retreival in Lion's Mail 5.  Doing anyhting that anyone has suggested in this thread will not fix that issue, go and read the posts before being so stupid as to quote and refer to them, twit.

The local Apple Support said that "While Mail in Mac OS X 10.6.x and earlier used to fall back to a default LOGIN method, this occasionally created some issues. Under Lion Mail no longer does this, and relies on the mail server to comply with RFC standards." The future updates of Lion may fix the problem, however suggested to contact local operator instead of waiting... great.

As has been noted before – OS X Lion client and server are fully comply with RFC email standards.

Petrifromhelsinki is correct. Formerly 'permissive' auth was often used allowing serious breaches of security for users, server admins and ISP's. Those are no longer allowed.

If you are having problems with mail authing against a server, it is because you need to beef up your own security. That may be an inconvenience for you – but at some point in the future will be required of everyone – because of the laxness of a few compromising email for the rest of us.

Security is your responsibility. Apple is just following accepted, published RFC.

Read here:  Mail Security Best Practices

                  RFC Standards for Internet Mail  

My mail worked just fine, I don't understand what the issue is. I have resolved tons of issues with people upgrading to Lion and the problem was user related. These IT pros are typically pros of Windows based systems or think they are amazing but when a simple tier 1 fixes their issue they get very upset. Most mail issues are user/setting error. Redo the settings, if that doesn't work, create a new brand new test user account... does the mail work there? Oh it does? Well you have a mail setting issue on that user. What do you do? Well you could delete the mail.plist and delete everything from mail or just delete the account and re-add it. Issue resolved. Also most people have issues with verification from their servers because they have mail checking the servers every 1 -5 min and their mail servers are so **** slow that they can't respond to the mac's request before it sends another one out causing mail sending and receiving issues. Set that to 15-30 min and 50% issues are resolved. Trust me, I resolved 90% of these issues at tier 1 even outlook server issues because I used to work with windows servers and I had to explain to the Server Admin how to reconfigure his outlook server, way outside scope..... but it worked.

Don't flame when you really don't know what you're talking about.

It's idiots like you that are delaying resolution of this isse. You have added nothing to this post other than telling us how great you are.  I'm sure your arm is sore from patting yourself on the back.

Most of us know what we are doing, we have tried all the possibilities and we cannot get our mail from an SSL server. If we were able to sucessfully set up mail in previous Apple OS's without any problems then I am sure we are knowledgeable enough to do the same in Lion. I have 6 mac's with only one running Lion, they ALL get mail from my SSL server fine except the one running Lion.

Many of us have a legitimate problem that we need Apple to address. If you have nothing useful to contribute then go bragg to the world some place else.

Follow your own advice and "don't flame when you don't know what you are talking about" !!

Hi there,

in response to 1.2 Kube: Great answer. I like it a lot.

in repsonse to the great Miksa: I have:

1. Redone the Mail settings -> No success

2. Created a new user -> No success

3. Created a new user in thunderbird and postbox -> Oh, I can receive my mails... Hmm I can't be that bad in setting up a mail client.

But if this issue is so easy I would like to ask Miksa to help me out and to solve the tiny little tier 1 problem since it is so easy to resolve...

in response to Michael: Yes we all know that Apple has changed the functionality of Mail 5 in order to comply with current RFCs with regards to security issues. But please leave the decision if a user wants to use an "unsafe" mail server to the user. Apple is not the GOD company that is supposed to decide for all of us what is good for us... Not being able to receive any mail is very secure. A little bit to secure for me... It would have been totally enough if a one-time popup would have given the advice that the mail server is unsafe. Want to continue anyway? YES I WANT BABY!

Looks like UW IMAP have made a fix to latest verion. Where to go from here?

UW IMAP software--UW IMAP Server Documentation

Updated: 22 July 2011

imap-2007f fixes a couple bugs.

Fix for RFC 4959 Initial Client Response auth failures noted first by

  MacOSX Lion Mail users.

How to solve Lion and Mail pop3 account war

Hi,

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Tobia