joefolio

Q: Problems with Mail on Lion with Exchange

Since upgrading to Lion I've encountered intermittent problems with Mail using Exchange with two of my Accounts. I can't find a pattern to the problem but it occurs once or twice every day. One or both of my mailboxes show as empty. If I quit and restart mail the empty box or boxes slowly refill. It's obvious that they are re-downloading from the server. At other, less frequent intervals Mail freezes. It simply stops receiving new mail (this does not occur when the mailbox has been emptyed) and Mail has frozen. After a forced quit and restart everthing works well again until one of the problems re-occurrs.

 

I have the same mail accounts on my MacBook Air (also using Lion) but this prblem des not occur on that unit. Also Mail on my iPhone is working fine.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Aug 2, 2011 4:16 AM

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Q: Problems with Mail on Lion with Exchange

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  • by dimlucas,

    dimlucas dimlucas Aug 2, 2011 8:52 AM in response to joefolio
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    Aug 2, 2011 8:52 AM in response to joefolio

    same problem here! my exchange mail only download the messages with the titles and gets stuck on loading to download the rest of the message and the attachments.

    exchange mail was working fine until yesterday and before when i had snow leopeard.

  • by buchem,

    buchem buchem Aug 3, 2011 8:10 AM in response to joefolio
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    Aug 3, 2011 8:10 AM in response to joefolio

    I have a similar problem. Mail works fine for a while, but deleting messages or moving from server to local mailbox causes Exchange account to stall. Activity window says Changing flags, [Inbox] Requesting latest information and progress bar just spins/scrolls. Quit command does not work. Must force quit and restart to restore function.

  • by dimlucas,

    dimlucas dimlucas Aug 3, 2011 10:39 AM in response to buchem
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    Aug 3, 2011 10:39 AM in response to buchem

    mine is still stuck on the loading thing and changing flags does not do anything.

  • by KiltedTim,

    KiltedTim KiltedTim Aug 3, 2011 10:50 AM in response to joefolio
    Level 9 (56,327 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 3, 2011 10:50 AM in response to joefolio

    What version of Exchange is running on the server side?

  • by dimlucas,

    dimlucas dimlucas Aug 3, 2011 10:52 AM in response to KiltedTim
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    Aug 3, 2011 10:52 AM in response to KiltedTim

    echange 2007......my mac mail was working fine with my exchange account every since i got my imac in nov 09.

    updated to lion OS and it worked perfectly until monday morning when all of a sudden all it does is download the messages and titles but nothing else, no message body, no attachments and gets stuck on loading...

  • by buchem,

    buchem buchem Aug 3, 2011 11:04 AM in response to KiltedTim
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 3, 2011 11:04 AM in response to KiltedTim

    Same - 2007.

  • by KiltedTim,

    KiltedTim KiltedTim Aug 3, 2011 11:50 AM in response to dimlucas
    Level 9 (56,327 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 3, 2011 11:50 AM in response to dimlucas

    Did you try removing the account from mail and re-creating it from the new mail, calendar and contacts item in System Preferences? (Sorry, not in front of my Mac so don't recall the exact name of it)  I was using Outlook 2011 previously and set up the Exchange account fresh after the Lion install and haven't had any problems at all like you describe. i like it so much, I've pretty much dumped Outlook now.

  • by buchem,

    buchem buchem Aug 3, 2011 11:59 AM in response to KiltedTim
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 3, 2011 11:59 AM in response to KiltedTim

    Actually, yes. After upgrading I had duplicate Exchange accounts in Mail so I deleted both and reinstalled using the new system preference. And by the way, earlier today I turned off the Organize by Conversation option, which I kind of liked but also found a little confusing, and have not had a problem since. Too early to tell if this actually fixed the problem though.

  • by dimlucas,

    dimlucas dimlucas Aug 3, 2011 12:38 PM in response to buchem
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    Aug 3, 2011 12:38 PM in response to buchem

    my exchange mail is stuck on loading. it actually loads the first 1 or 2 messages and then gets stuck.

    really don't understand what the problem is as it was working fine until 2 days ago.

  • by daviddaroussin,

    daviddaroussin daviddaroussin Aug 9, 2011 12:37 PM in response to joefolio
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    Aug 9, 2011 12:37 PM in response to joefolio

    I am French and my English is not very good. I think the problem presented here is similar to my problems. After several searches, I realized that when two accounts are configured on Exchange Mail, the software created local folders in the address / Users/nameofuser/Library/Mail/V2 /
    The files they create are the same for Exchange. I have similar addresses but with different domain names. The file he created is the same: EWS-xxxxx@server.exchange.local (xxxx = xxxx@toto.com).
    In this case, the software is not able to create a file for the second account and this creates conflict.
    It would be nice that Apple updates the software to allow Exchange to create accounts in this situation!

     

    Mac Book Mac OS X (10.7) Mail 5.0

  • by buchem,

    buchem buchem Aug 9, 2011 12:44 PM in response to daviddaroussin
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    Aug 9, 2011 12:44 PM in response to daviddaroussin

    That is still not exactly my problem as I have only one Exchange account. But I have found a way around the problem for me. I deactivated the Exchange account and set up a generic IMAP account for the same address. Not sure what I am losing by using IMAP instead of EWS, but email has worked fine for 24 hours now.

  • by NinjaGreg,

    NinjaGreg NinjaGreg Aug 12, 2011 1:09 PM in response to joefolio
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    Aug 12, 2011 1:09 PM in response to joefolio

    This appears to be a problem that has been around for a while; there are other threads about this (try searching for "Requesting latest information" in the search box above) indicating it has been around since before Lion.

     

    As noted in that thread, you can see the cause of the hang by going to Window > Activity, which brings up a small window showing what Mail is currently doing. The most common instance I have seen is when the activity shows "Changing flags" as the bold heading, with "[Inbox] Requesting latest information" below that. The activity barber-pole is spinning along, but nothing is happening.

     

    Hitting the red stop sign to the right of that kills that particular task, which has resulted in some messages not being marked as "read" (i.e. the little blue ball on the left does not go away), but it can also interfere with moving messages to my mail folders, or even downloading mail from the mail server. So as long as you're OK with the annoyances of having to re-move mail, having it marked as unread when you've already seen it, and so on, you don't need to move to IMAP.

     

    An IMAP account leaves your mail on the server, rather than downloading it to your computer, similar to the way Google mail works. Many IT organizations limit the amount of mail you can keep on the server, so I use mailboxes "on my computer", which transfers the emails out of the server folders, keeping my server footprint small.

     

    Message was edited by: NinjaGreg

  • by KiltedTim,

    KiltedTim KiltedTim Aug 12, 2011 1:19 PM in response to buchem
    Level 9 (56,327 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 12, 2011 1:19 PM in response to buchem

    For what it's worth, I recently ran across a thread regarding problems with an iPad and iPhone using Exchange. I believe Lion is using Exchange Active Sync just like the iPhone.

     

    In that case, several people found the problem to be related to a specific message in their in-box. I don't believe anyone determined exactly why that message was a problem, but when they went through and started moving or deleting messages out of the in-box one by one, they eventually came upon one that made the problem suddenly go away.

     

    In one case the poster was an IT person with a dozen or so users all with iPhones who were having the same problem.

     

    Just a thought. Try cleaning out your inbox and see if you can identify what message is killing it.

  • by buchem,

    buchem buchem Aug 12, 2011 1:29 PM in response to NinjaGreg
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 12, 2011 1:29 PM in response to NinjaGreg

    Yes, I have used the Activity window to monitor the situation and this is exactly what I see. I also found similar problems reported before Lion, but mine started after the upgrade. In any event, IMAP works for me (except for the odd fact that the Mail icon does not display the number of unread messages any more, despite setting the preference to do so). My account does have a quota, but in any event I file local copies of important messages, delete unimportant ones, and backup everything to Gmail. Accessing the account via IMAP has no effect on this. But the issue with Exchange prevents new mail from arriving and unless I am continuously monitoring the Activity window I don't know it is happening. That is a big problem. I have not tried KiltedTim's suggestion as I have reached the point of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". IMAP just works.

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