Mac Mail 6 is missing the "spinning wheel" indicator when checking for new mail

Should we not answer the questions that are posted?

Barney, as you have helped so many others perhaps you can help me get my "spinning wheel" back. However, I am running mail 4.6 and 10.6.8. Do you have any suggestions for me? My only mail program is Mac Mail. I performed a "repair disk permissions" and then a restart but this did not bring back the spinning indicator. I have read elsewhere that doing a Rebuild is worth trying but I am not a sophisticated user and don't want any new problems. Thanks in advance for any help you can give.

@Mark Fein - Is your mail account setup as pop not imapi?

Try following the instructions on this page to delete and rebuild your mail sandbox folder:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4622164?answerId=20662231022#20662231022

"Should we not answer the questions that are posted?"

If you have an answer or solution that adds something of benifit or is at all useful then it is a good idea to post. If you don't have anything of value to add and only insult or snark other members for being frustrated by this needless feature downgrade, then best not to post at all. Why post if your post is useless at best, snarky at worst? It really isn't helpful.

"Maybe because its only the handful of people on this thread that find it problematic."

No need to be an appologist for Apple's decision, that isn't helpful in the slighest.

It is also incorrect. If you bother to google the issue there are many many more threads both here and on all the various message boards where people mention their frustration with the exact same issue. For every one user that bothers to comment you can bet there are at least ten more who were bothered by the needless feature downgrade but couldn't be bothered to look into it. Plus a user in the thread called Applecare about this issue and the rep said they had getting a ton of calls about this issue.

Just because it isn't an issue for you doesn't mean it isn't a legitimate issue for all the users in this thread.

Helpful Answer:

For anyone just joing this thread, if you miss this feature, please post here *AND* send your feedback directly to apple via: Mail > Provide Mail Feedback in Mail.app.

Redesigned: Thanks for your reply. Mail is set up as a pop account. RE deleting and rebuilding, my backup device is a Seagate Free Agent Go portable, but as far as I can tell there is no way for me to back up all of my emails before doing the sandbox rebuild as mentioned by Linc Davis in the above discussion.

There is no 'Containers' Folder in OS 10.6.8, so the link you supplied applies to Lion/ML only.

How is that an apology? I have no need for it. Many others have no need for it. Someone asked why Apple hasn't fixed it, yet. I posited a reasonable theory. For some reason, that theory causes you some sort of pain.

Here's why I don't need it:

Nobody needs a nag. The spinning wheel only serves to tell you what you already know, your messages were sent. If you click the button, and it doesn't error out, then your message was sent. No need to spin a widget on the screen to tell me the thing I sent is sending. I already know it is sending. I clicked the send button.

If there is a failure, the spinning wheel tells you absolutely nothing.

Helpful Answer:

For anyone just joing this thread, if you miss this feature, please post here *AND* send your feedback directly to apple via: Mail > Provide Mail Feedback in Mail.app.

Exactly. Whining and ranting here won't change a thing. The only Apple employees who are here are the moderators. This is a forum for users to help other users with technical support. We can't change the software. We can't influence design decisions. We don't have any special connection with the software engineers.

you do not need to back up your email before doing that, it doesn't delete any of your messages, but @Mikofox says that there is not Containers folder in 10.6.8 Some people are saying to delete your com.apple.mail.plist file and let it rebuild. sorry i cannot be of more help, i haven't had that version installed for quite some time. best of luck!

The spinning wheel only serves to tell you what you already know, your messages were sent.

No, no, no the spinning wheel told you a heck of a lot more. Maybe you weren't familiar with that feature. In addition to activity it had several statuses as well as a mouse over text status. It was very helpful to people with multiple accounts especially those without good interent conenctions. If you actually read the thread you'd see the usefulness of it and how the two replacement indicatiors don't measure up.

Just because you are not familiar with the feature and cannot understand why eveyone here misses it doesn't mean it wasn't helpful or missed.

Did Apple appoint you to the whining police squad? Why would you go onto a thread where you have absolutly nothing of value to add, and accuse all the posters there of whining? Who does that benifit? How is that not a total dick move? I've already made my points about the uselessness of communicating in such an immature and useless way, but apparently they were missed because here you are back with more of the same. *sighs*

You may want to delete the com.apple.mail.plist. (/Users/Username/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist)

Close Mail, move this .plist to the Desktop and reopen Mail. You loose your Settings if it works, but if it doesn't, you can replace the new plist with the old one and you're back at square one.

You could create another User, setup a Mail account and see if the server-connect' wheels are back with the new installation.

Thanks again, Rd. For the moment I'm just going to stay on the sideline unless someone with my setup has solved the same problem. Not having the visual is a loss to me psychologically at least and I would like, just for the **** of it, to know why it disappeared and how to get it back. But my situation/complaint is lost in the flood of complaints for higher level users.

Mike: you may have the solution but believe it or not it's just too complex for me to undertake.

It's easy (but I can't promise it will fix your problem):

Close Mail.

Go to Finder, click your Home Folder (under Places in Sidebar), click Library, scroll down to Preferences and click the folder, scroll down to: com.apple.mail.plist grab and drag this file to the Desktop

Keep the Preferences Folder open.

Reopen Mail and check. If it did not fix the 'wheel' issue, close Mail and drag the .plist file on the Desktop back into the Preferences Folder and click 'Replace' if it asks.

I assume you don't have any or many custom settings in Mail, so you could just close Mail and delete the .plist file mentioned above and then reopen Mail.

The spinning wheel only serves to tell you what you already know, your messages were sent.

No... This is an important issue and the spinning wheel lets me know quickly & obviously, if each of my (several) mail accounts are being checked, - it has nothing whatsoever to do with sending mail!

It is an unnecessary change in Mac Mail and many of us want it back, and that could be through help here or through feedback to Apple.

Peter

I am beginning to get confused, up until now I thought that the missing cartwheel was something to do with the design of Mountain Lion. Is it now something to do with trashing your .plist file...?? Mikofox, you are talking about Mountain Lion....??

No, it was removed in Mountain Lion, that is correct. :-(

Mikofox is helping Mark Fein with his problem of it disappearing in Snow Leopard, which should have it.