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iCloud email forwarding broken

Hi all!


Since 12:41 a.m. on 8/1/12 on my macbook air, my .mac email (now in iCloud) is not forwarding to my gmail account. Previous to that I have had no problems and didnt change anything.


I have it/both iCloud and gmail set up as IMAP...I have the iCloud autoforwarding set to my gmail account - and nothing - no messages are forwarded to gmail. That said, if I manually compose an email in iCloud and send to the same gmail account, the sending works fine. (So the gmail account gets it fine when I send them one at a time - but nothing moves to gmail with either a rule set or with autoforwarding.)


Any thoughts would be appreciated. I am not using Apple Mail program and all iCloud messages are set to be kept on the server.


Thanks in advance,

Casey

MacBook Air (11-inch Late 2010), Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 3, 2012 1:53 PM

Reply
21 replies

Sep 26, 2017 8:36 AM in response to HBinswanger

Rules don't seem to work either. I've been using Apple's cloud service since it began and only now am I attempting to forward from my icloud account. Seems the issue is still there and setting a rule doesn't resolve the issue.


Happy to say that I'm in the final stages of leaving Apple for good, after 20 years of customer loyalty. They've dropped the ball on many different levels IMO and moving my mail to my business gmail account is the final step. Hopefully this gets resolved. After all... it is 2017 and it seems this bug is still around.

Aug 3, 2012 6:49 PM in response to cjlee

fwiw, I'm noticing the same thing. Forwarding from iCloud email is simply not working. It was sporadic earlier this week and has been totally dead all day today.


I'm sure someone will chime in with more info, but I believe that iCloud mail is hosted on many different servers at Apple and users are distributed to the various servers randomly (or at least via some non-publicized scheme). It's entirely possible that problems on one server, or a subset of servers, do not appear on all servers. Hence, forwarding may be working fine for some users but not for others.


Anyway, I don't have a solution (I've been scouring these forums and the 'net in general for info and have tried a variety of things such as rules, resetting caches, deleting files, etc.)...but I figure that eventually Apple will figure it out, clear the problems, and forwarding will restart.

Aug 4, 2012 7:05 PM in response to cjlee

Update: still not forwarding


Today I went into the Apple store and spent time at the Genius Bar. The guy tried to get my iCloud email to forward to his aol account and it didn't so we confirmed that it wasn't just an iCloud forwarding to Gmail issue.


He then opened a case with AppleCare and I came home and called there. Talked to a 'more than senior advisor' who remote controlled my screen and again was convinced the forwarding didn't work. He thought it might be due to a lot of messages on the server (I have thousands) and that might be the issue.


The next step he took was to create a ticket for 'engineering' to fix it. He will get back to me next Wednesday, 8/8 with whatever they tell him.


Will keep you posted and I'd appreciate it if it starts working for you, if you'd let me know.


Thanks,

Casey

Aug 5, 2012 9:17 AM in response to cjlee

Same problem here.


For reference I have been happy with the rules filtering in mail, but for the holistic iCloud experience you need to filter at the server, not on the desktop. After finding the rules in iCloud too limited I tried forwarding my mail over to Gmail, then to my ISP mail, then to another @me.com address - but all resulted in error messages, and no forwarding.


😟


I do hope that something picks up soon.

Aug 6, 2012 2:48 AM in response to cjlee

I have the same problem, but the problem is not limited to Google. I am forwarding 3 different iCloud email accounts to different email addresses in the same domain at an email hosting service other than Google. 2 of the 3 worked for about 3 weeks but now fail to forward mail. The 3rd one still works, even though all are being forwarded to the same domain.


When I tried sending mail from one of these iCloud accounts to another one of these iCloud accounts, I received a message from "postmaster@mac.com" with the subject "Delivery Notification: Delivery has failed". The body said mail could not be forwarded to my account at the non-Apple mail hosting service because: "Reason: Illegal host/domain name found". However, I can send mail directly to any of the accounts that Apple says are "illegal".

Aug 6, 2012 3:50 AM in response to B Stern

B Stern:


Just curious...did the one that STILL forwards start out as a MobileMe/.mac account (which you transitioned over to iCloud)? Or perhaps (more likely IMO) was that one created natively in iCloud whereas the two that no longer forward might have started out as MobileMe?


I have a vague suspicion that whatever broke is a result of Apple's final turning off MobileMe. Even if a user migrated to iCloud, it still may be that his/her email was hosted on a particular set of servers (different from those servers that have always been iCloud since created)...and that could be where the problem lies.


It's clear that this is NOT a problem at the user end (i.e., at any of our computers or our configurations), and it doesn't really have anything to do with what account one is trying to forward mail TO. Rather, it's something more underlying at the server end (like a DNS problem). Unfortunately, getting this esculated to the right type of technician at Apple will be problematic. It's certainly not something that someone at the Genius bar can fix. And no amount of the standard Apple telephone support calls for "reinstall your software" will do anything either. Ugh.

Aug 6, 2012 11:18 AM in response to jsunma

@jsunma:


All my iCloud accounts originated in Dot-Mac, the predecessor of MobileMe.


Also, the one account in which forwarding still works was originally a "family pack sub-account" in Dot-Mac and MobileMe. Of thte two accounts in which forwarding is broken, one also originated as a family pack sub-account, and the other was the master account. So this does not explain anything.


Just to clarify: I specified forwarding as an iCloud server rule, not in my mail client.

iCloud email forwarding broken

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