Mail in OSX Lion : pop not OK

I had the same problem with pop mail and Lion's Mail app. as most people here. I could send mail but couldn't receive it. I tried all the suggestions posted here with no success. I finally found a work around that works for me and may help others out there that like me didn't want to switch to another mail program like Postbox. I set up Gmail to retrieve mail off my ISP's pop mail server and to use IMAP. I then set up an account on Mail to use IMAP Gmail for incoming mail and used my ISP's outgoing mail server for sending mail. Until Apple fixes Mail this is the solution I'll be using and hopefully this will help others with the same problem.

I'm having the exact same problem since this afternoon, but I'm still on Snow Leopard (10.6.8). I have a yahoo POP account and tried everything suggested, but nothing worked. It just seems to download incoming mail at first, I can see it in the activity bar, but then nothing in my inbox and the "no new mail" sound. I apologize for the non-tech terms, but, despite being a loyal apple user, I'm no mac geek, sorry! I hope someone can help anyway.

Manuel,

This is the response from my ISP. Is this wrong? What should they change?

$ telnet pop3.fibertel.com.ar 110

Trying 24.232.0.160...

Connected to pop.fibertel.com.ar.

Escape character is '^]'.

+OK pop.fibertel.com.ar -- Server POP (Fibertel - Argentina) (mta4)

CAPA

+OK list follows

TOP

PIPELINING

UIDL

RESP-CODES

AUTH-RESP-CODE

USER

SASL PLAIN

IMPLEMENTATION MMP-6.1p0.11 Jan 28 2005

Yes that's right.

Is this working ?

Hi Everybody!

I had the same problem with my POP account but i found the solution for me. It is not about the ISP configuration, but a default setting of the Mail 5.0. The problem is that the Mail 5.0 put the default authentication method to APOP, which is more secure than the simply POP server Password method but much less common...

So, to solve this try to go to your Mail Preferences, then accounts, then select your problematic POP account, then select the Advanced tab and there at the Authentication select Password (or whatever is your ISP's authentication protocol), instead of the default APOP.

After you have to restart the Mail 5.0 and it should work your POP account fine.

It worked for me, I hope i could help.

Hi there, I have tried the Password Authentication and restarted the program -- no joy, tried every other suggestion and discussed it with my ISP techie, it is definitely Apple's problem in Mail 5.0 so it looks like Postbox will be getting a sign up, though it bugs me that I now have to pay for a new mail program just because I took Apple's advice and upgraded a very nicely working OS.

Unhappy Mac user (at least in this aspect)

My Outbox mail was stuck, not sending…again…after having upgraded Lion to 10.7.1. I SOLVED IT this way.

So, I went to System Prefs/Mail Contacts & Calendars.

I deleted my MobileMe account setting from this list of accounts.

( This doesn’t vaporize all your mail or anything, it just acts like it’s a setup…or a trigger for MobileMe to manage this account. This should not have to keep being reset with each upgrade, but for now this seems to work. )

Then, I re-added the same MobileMe account back in.

Took a few seconds to do that…

Name, Password, Description. Voila.

Then I re-opened Mail and everything worked as it should. My Outbox emptied itself in seconds.

Now all is right with the world…..until this happens again.

Solve it simply by going to System Prefs for Mail and Delete the accounts and then Add them back in.

Then go to Mail / Preferences / Accounts / Outgoing Mail Server / Edit SMTP Server List / here select your account and re-enter the password if it has now been left blank … again.

Your inbox will then repopulate.

This to all those that could not get their mail anymore and who called apple support and re-downloaded their LION OSX update as told, and it still didn't work, and at apple support they had no idea on how to fix the problem.

The above solutions gave me a clue - to delete the account and then to reinstall them, as it might work with a different protocol once re inserted and POP would work again. Problem, it says it will delete all your mailboxes and mail, so cannot take that risk, so I deleted an old mail account account I had setup, hardly used.

Once I reinstalled (reinserted) the same mail account, and it worked, I noticed that the authentication had changed itself to : MD5 Challenge-response, no POP, or APOP. I changed that in my main mail account, and believe it or not it suddenly worked, Hurrah ! An all my email that had been stuck on the server suddenly all came down.

Hope this helps !

Same problem in Canada. Able to send with Lion but very slow receive rates from ISP. ISP Tech Support confirmed the same issues that other Lion users are having. Hope there is an upgrade soon !

OK. It's still not fixed.... The above reset will work immediately but then after a period of time...you're back to the same old problem of mail not sending. Reset again...and mail sends immediately. Wait awhile and the problem repeats. Not very reassuring.

How to solve Lion and Mail pop3 account war

Hi,

if you are here you have a problem like me and many many others guys but the good news is, Yep, i wrote a simple python proxy servers that solve the problem. Technicals details follows.

http://www.tobiacaneschi.com/?p=1

Tobia

You are right, mine is off again just today, after downloading some JAVA applet, that was needed to run some banking programm, but maybe unrelated. It kept on working since Aug 22, but always asking for the mail password, altough it is stored in the prefrences setup, and the keychain. Sometimes it would not ask, and gets the mail, then again soetimes it would ask. very unstable.

Now it's all off again and no incoming mail, only outgoing.

Apple sold me an upgrade, now can they please make this work ? Or tell us how we can rollback to snow leopard ? Support also didn't know how to make it work. They did not call back either, altough they sent me emails to keep in touch, which I did.

Is there some journalist out there ? This upgrade is a complete mess. How can apple leave it like this, all forums are full with this and no solution in sight.

Mike

Hello guys,

After a while I figured out what was going wrong with the POP email accounts and Mail 5.

It happens that the new app is using a protocol that was not used by the mail programs as well as by ISP providers.

Now, Mail 5, is questioning the mail servers about capability (CAPA instruction) and most of the servers answer as IMAP by default, even tho they are POP servers.

So when Mail 5 receives this answer, it does not establish the connection and so POP accounts don't work.

My ISP came out with a non conventional solution while they work on the server configuration.

The solution is deleting the POP accounts and recreating them, indicating they are IMAP accounts, but configuring them manually as POP.

To be clear, when recreating the account, the programs asks for the type of account. There you put IMAP.

Further, when it cames to configure the account, you do it manually, configuring the POP and SMTP servers as if they were POP accounts.

What this does is deceive Mail 5 which is specting an IMAP answer, but after that the account works as POP.

It worked for me and my ISP (Fibertel).

Hope this works for you too.