MobileMe smtp server keeps going offline

Hi Grey!

Pardon the interruption, but I just read you post there . . . been having problems with MM account off and on for months. I went over and checked, and sure enough, I had both addresses! (The window is very rarely opened wide enough to have seen the 2nd address.) Thanks a bunch!!!!!

Did this resolve your issues?

The problem seemed to surface after I upgraded a client's machine to Lion—intermittent but persistent problems sending mail out, and a spinning wait cursor on the Inbox, even though it was downloading mail successfully. Something tells me it might have more to do with whatever's happening in the background vis-à-vis the transition to iCloud.

Grey Jensen wrote:

Something tells me it might have more to do with whatever's happening in the background vis-à-vis the transition to iCloud.

I think Grey's conjecture is definitely accurate; and I have posted on this a number of times here and elsewhere—this problem is now genuinely irritating.

And my problem (able to receive email via the Mail app), and sometimes being unable to send replies has returned today, and no settings have been changed. Some unsendable Outbox emails are saved onto the Web Mail program, so I can send these on from that application, and others are not. Mail from Lion, being on an excellent connection, is not reliable, so useless for me.

I have made the web app forward all emails to gmail—this is not professional, IMHO.

I am sure this is being worked on, but having the app work perfectly one day and be unuseable the nest is not workable, for me.

Further, when I looked at my Account pane in Mail Prefs, I found that a me.com address had been added, even though I have only ever used the dot mac one.

I deleted this, but Mail still cannot Send.

A couple of things:

• The mac.com domain is deprecated; you must delete the mac.com email address from Mail Prefs, not the me.com address. If you delete the me.com address from the Email Address field (and leave mac.com there) you will experience the same problems as having both addresses there when sending mail—both new mail and replies.
• You're not "changing your email address" to me.com—Apple already did that for you, and you don't have a choice in the matter. You will continue to receive mail addressed to either mac.com or me.com. Try this yourself from a different account. People that have you as mac.com in their Contacts / Address Book will not have to change anything, although they may have been prompted at some point to add your me.com address to their contacts database.
• Regardless of how incoming mail is addressed, replies will be appended with me.com, and only go out through the smtp.me.com path.
• Those of you trying to hang on to mac.com in the server list will notice that although you can delete the mac.com server instances from Edit Server List in Prefs—the mac.com servers will still show up in the smtp server menu (after you've closed Prefs and saved changes) and in the error dialogue that inevitably appears.
• In summary: the solution is to delete the mac.com entry in the Email Address field, and re-enter me.com if you have deleted it. You will then notice that the smtp.mac.com instance(s) are absent from the smtp server menu for both replies and new messages—smtp.me.com being the only option. This has resolved the issue for me on several accounts that were created in the mac.com era.
• Finally: although MobileMe has definitely had its problems at times—especially with the sync functions—the me.com Mail is an excellent client. The resident spam filtering is powerful, and transparent. Managing folder structure is infinitely easier than in Gmail ("Labels"), which is unnecessarily confusing, opaque, and frustrating to almost everyone, in my experience.

Following your suggestions has Mail working again—but why, oh why, is this information not pushed to us as Apple customers? If this is the solution, why doesn't Apple simply let people know what they need to do (or work on the back end so that this is reconfigured when the Mail client connects to their servers)?

And (@ Grey) I agree 100% re. gmail, and why it's my "last resport" solution

Cheers and thanks (but let's see if these changes hold!)

Kit

More thoughts about MobileMe services, iCloud and email:

• MobileMe has been the only reliable path for syncing my Address Book among my computers and portable devices. It has worked flawlessly and consistently for me, with only the occasional glitch . Yes, you can **** around with Gmail contact-syncing and/or Exchange servers, but the Google solution seems kludgy and complicated—just like their IMAP mail service. Hopefully iCloud and iOS5 will iron out the issues with device-syncing that have plagued many MobileMe users.
• Another option for email is to register a personal domain and pay a nominal annual fee for a hosting account—even if you only use the domain for email services. There are many excellent hosting services out there; personally, I like Bluehost. For ~$80/yr, I have unlimited domain-hosting, huge bandwidth, unlimited storage with FTP access, and multiple IMAP email accounts, which are configured in Mail on all of my devices. Bluehost will give you one free domain registration at signup. Check out their plans. They have excellent phone support, minimal down-time, and make it easy to host an iWeb-created website—for those of you that are currently hosting a site on Apple's servers, and which will not be an option in a few months. An email address associated with your personal domain adds a professional touch to your web presence. I have several addresses that I use to manage and customize my communications—e.g., info@myname.com, support@myname.com, etc.

< Edited By Host >

Oh, so Apple won't let me say ****-around. That seems a little ******* hypocritical.

Grey --

Don't worry about it . . . we've all been hit with the automatic censor. For years, I could not say what kind of spaniel I had for a pet. (Hint: It's not a Springer, LOL).

crackup: what kind of spanial?

🙂

Umm, a **** Spaniel?

I love it!

Kit --

It's a Kocker Spaniel, obviously.

👿

****. I was ******* sure it was a ******* **** Spaniel.