Mail shows my SMTP is "offline": How do I get my SMTP "online"?

I have had the ame isue with my new 27 inch fusion drive...

After six months of technical "support" and finally, help from apple engineers in the US, this simple solution seems to work so far...

Please add the following DNS Addresses in the advance section of the ethernet and WiFi interfaces in Network preferences.

8.8.8.8

8.8.4.4

Give it a try.

Sin.e.bouli -- how do you generate an application specific password for the outgoing SMTP server? That is, once I hav egone to google to generate the password, where do I drop it in? I am not seeing a box or option that lets me do that for the poutgoing server -- can only seem to do it for the incoming. Woudl be grateful if you couild post the steps. Thanks.

First generate your SMTP specific password in Google -> Accounts -> Security -> 2-Step Verification -> Manage your application specific passwords

Then...

In Mac Mail go Mail -> Preferences -> Accounts -> Account Information -> Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP) -> In dropdown select "Edit SMTP Server List" -> Advanced -> Authentication set to Password -> enter your Google email address as username & your recently generated 2-Step verification password as the password.

Hope that helps & works!

Hello everyone, joining the bandwagon...

Mail Connection Doctor says my Google IMAP is perfect, while the SMTP is not (verify that the username and password are correct.)

Account Information:

Description: Gmail

Server Name: smtp.gmail.com

TLS Certificate: NONE 😕

Advanced:

Use default ports: enabled (I've tried using custom ports separately, the Gmail SMTP stays offline)

SSL: enabled

Authentication: PW

User name: my full email address

Password: my PW

The 2-step Gmail verification is enabled and so is the Application-specific password.

I've tried everything, I can only receive emails. This happened to me two days ago, just before Mavericks came out.

Thanks for your help...

I had entered the Google-generated ASPW in the IMAP settings, but I didn't do it for the SMTP settings.

Interesting!

I've now revoked the ASPW for Mail, created a new one, entered it in the SMTP settings, and run the Connection Doctor. This way I've solved the SMTP problem BUT created an IMAP problem. So, I've entered the same ASPW in the IMAP settings - it looks like entering the same PW twice - and it now works.

Thanks!

I had not entered the ASPW in the SMTP settings because the PW was as long as my current PW (shorter than Google ASPWs) and I thought that there was need to change it.

I hope my case is useful to people with the same problem.

Still, no TLS certificate. Is that normal?

My SMTP server would always show offline for WIFI. As soon as I plugged in wired connection it would show online. Couldn't send WIFI but could send wired through the same BT home hub. Ipad and Iphone all sent fine.

Added 8.8.8.8 (belongs to Google funnily enough) to the DNS on the WIFI connection and hey presto. It immediately saw the SMTP server online.

It must be using googles DNS to resolve the name of the SMTP server. Why mail needs that I have no idea.

Thunderbird and Sparrow are fine for sending without the added DNS settings.

Thanks

🙂

Have both a wired and a Wi-Fi connection and this has not given me any problems with Mail until the Mavericks update, when suddenly GMail SMTP is 'Offline'.

I switched off my Wi-Fi and suddenly GMail comes back to life! Adding the 2 IP Addresses to the DNS of the Wi-FI and switching it back on again - still working…

Crazy!

I used sin.e.bouli's solution and it worked for a time. My SMTP is showing "offline." Now I'm getting the SMTP error again, and had some business emails send from my personal account. I also use the 2-step verification.

And thats the last straw, that: I need better control than that.

I'm seriously frustrated with Apple at this point: I just feel I shouldn't have to delete Keychain entries to make Gmail work.

Does anybody have a good recommendation for a good multi-account mail app that just handles this stuff simply and securely? I haven't used anything but Mail for a long time.... Too long, evidently.

Further to my post of September 24, 2013 I continue to be plagued by the issue. I am now permanently unable to send mail from my work-related account on my desktop since the host upgraded my organisation's server about a month ago. I have tried everything that I knew and almost everything as suggested by just about everyone on this thread. Even when I managed to take the SMTP server online, the message just stayed in the Outbox and refused to go. It is definitely a software issue and the culprit is Apple Mail and/or OS X. I can say this with almost 100% certainty because I have no problem sending email with the same account from my MacBook Air. I have tried using the exact settings and configuration. The only difference is that I have not updated Mail and OS X in my laptop. The versions in my notebook are 6.6 and 10.8.5 respectivly whereas in my iMac they are 7.0 and 10.9 respectively. I also have no issue when I use Thunderbird as the mail client. Also no issue with iPhone and iPad.

I rest my case.

After much mucking around, I finally found out when I switched to Outlook on my Apple to send the mail that I was being blocked by Spamhaus. I have no idea as to why because the Trojan they listed can only infect Windows machines according to Wikipedia.

This may be possible as a result of restarting your modem if you have a dynamic IP address. You may have been allocated an IP which had an infected machine attached and now Spamhaus thinks it's you. If you use dynamic IPs, you can get a different IP address by turning your modem off and then back on again. Your ISP will then allocate a different IP address and this may well fix the problem.

If not.......

You can find your IP address by going to whatismyip.com and then searching it in Spamhaus (http://www.spamhaus.org/lookup/)

Anyway, I delisted my IP address and in about an hour I was happily sending emails from my Apple Mail client again.

Cheers,

I solved the problem with the smtp.gmail.com showing as "off line" by opening the Keychain Access ap and opening the LOGIN page, clicking on PASSWORDS. I found there 4 entrys for smtp.gmail.com for my email account and when I double clicked on each of them I found 3 of them had old passwords in them (check the "show password" box to see the characters). I was afraid to delete these so I changed each of them to my current password, saved each of these, closed the ap and restarted my computer and this fixed the problem.

This has bugged me some sometime, thanks Suzhouman - although my fix was a little different, I opened Keychain Access and then opened the Optus (Gmail not a problem) login file, signed in using my new iMac sign in (just bought a new iMac) then used the Optus mail sign in (although I "THINK" it came up automatically - sounds confusing but it did fix the problem using your advice as a guide - Tks Tangels1

my solution was:

enter as additional DNS Server in your TCP/IP connection the Google DNS servers:

8.8.8.8

8.8.8.4

worked for me. (confirmed by deleting DNS entries again and getting the same connections problems again)

Looks like Google has an issue with its DNS for smtp.gmail.com which needs its own DNS server to point to the correct server.

Guys...Spent hours in creating passwords and now finally got the perfect solution.

Googls application specific password need to upate two place....One is at IMAP (incoming server) and another is at SMTP (outgoing server).

Most of just changed it only at IMAP that's why you can receive mails but can't send.

Just put the new password at SMTP too and it should work fine.

Cheers

Punit

Hoping not to add to the confusion, I did as sc59 said and just changed the outgoing server port setting to use 'custom port' 25 and everything works fine. You don't have to go into keychain and muck about changing everything!