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

Okay, fixed it on mine. In Mail.app:

1) Mail menu | Preferences.

2) Select problematic account in list on left.

3) Select "Edit SMTP Server List..." from Outgoing Mail Server drop-down.

4) Fix username by appending domain name
(append "@gmail.com" if standard account, or your own domain if apps user).

5) Re-enter password.

Save your preferences.

I would still recommend opening your "keychain" and looking at all the the "logins" and "passowrds" for smtp.gmail.com entries. You will find two different entries, one for each gmail account you are using. There may be multiple entries in EACH seperate account and then make sure the have only the current password for each account.

Close and then reopen MAIL app and now both smtp should be available and select the correct one when you send your next email.

Good luck!

Thank you Suzhouman! I had this problem and your answer got me in the right direction.

I have three Gmail accounts and somehow one of them had 2 keychain entries. One mentioned a port, the other did not. I removed that one without a port, then tried a Test mail from this 'offline' account to one of my online accounts. Mail asked for the password and upon entering it everything worked again - testmail got sent and smtp for this account is now online.

NOTE: It's very easy to accidentally cross configure your SMTP/account settings when fixing the setup this way. Remember that you had an account selected when you opened the SMTP editing dialog. When you're in the editing dialog you can see and fix problems with multiple SMTP servers, however, the currently selected acount will be assigned whatever SMTP server is selected when the edit SMTP server dialog is closed. So remeber to go back to the SMTP server for the currently selected account. Of course fixing the problem after the fact is extremely easy, once you realize what happened. Just go back to the SMTP server edit dialog and select the right one for the current account.

This one has been driving me crazy too... Long story short, I discovered that during the initial set up process OS X mail "simplifies" the Gmail user name login credential to just your "username" (versus the full username@domain.com).

And, it does not force you to specify the SMTP server port (I'm assuming it tries all of the permitted ports).

In the SMTP advanced settings for the Gmail account in question I changed my "user name" to the full "username@domain.com" loging name *AND* (not sure this was necessary, but I did it anyway) I changed the SMTP "server port" to the one specified by Google for my Gmail account (port 587 in my case).

I can now send mail through the Gmail SMTP server from OS X mail.

Hope this helps.

System Preferences / Network / Advanced (blue button bottom Right) / click on DNS tab second from left / click on + at the bottom left window add the numbers separatly as DNS servers.

Hope this is useful.

Mine is still working anyway!

I had this problem on and off the past few days, after reading this discussion, I changed the DNS information to Google's DNS (8.8.8.8 & 8.8.4.4) and viola! All of the email in my outbox went within second of hitting 'Apply' in my Network Settings.

pawebdeveloper and ozraym are right. My solution worked only briefly before outgoing mail started getting blocked again. I then changed the DNS settings per their suggestion. Since then, everything's been working perfectly. Fingers and toes crossed.

Thanks for your response! I got everything to work by checking all the server settings and re-entering the passwords. Everthing appeared fine but one of my mail accounts password was completely blank. Strange. But now all is okay. I'll save the re-install option in case the problem returns.

I'm new to this discussion. I went to Apple store yesterday and, unfortunately, they told me it was google gmail issue and did not help me. I get the below message (for 3 weeks now most of my sent emails bounce back to me. I am not a teckie so I don't understand the lingo. My computer guy told me to change my email address. I really do not want to do this. Can anyone help or know of anyone in RI who I can call? The following is what I get bounced back most of the time: (I deleted Pam's last name for privacy.) Thank you.

This is the mail system at host mxout2.codelock.com.

I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not

be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.

For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.

If you do so, please include this problem report. You can

delete your own text from the attached returned message.

The mail system

<pam@att.net>: host aln-mailrelay.att.net[12.102.252.75] said:

521-173.203.205.160 blocked by sbc:blacklist.mailrelay.att.net. 521 DNSRBL:

Blocked for abuse. See http://att.net/blocks (in reply to MAIL FROM

command)

Reporting-MTA: dns; mxout2.codelock.com

X-Postfix-Relay-Hub-Queue-ID: 62D18704CF

X-Postfix-Relay-Hub-Sender: rfc822; gloria@northendjst.com

Arrival-Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2014 15:33:08 -0400 (EDT)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; pam@att.net

Original-Recipient: rfc822;pam@att.net

Action: failed

Status: 5.0.0

Remote-MTA: dns; aln-mailrelay.att.net

Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 521-173.203.205.160 blocked by

sbc:blacklist.mailrelay.att.net. 521 DNSRBL: Blocked for abuse. See

http://att.net/blocks

Then that means I am blacklisted by cox.net and verizon.net and comcast.net and a few others. Yet, yesterday and today one of my friends who is cox.net went through to her. I don't know what this means nor what to do. It's been this way for almost 4 weeks. Is it time to ditch that email address? But I use it for so many things.

Here was my situation. I had 3 gmail accounts and 2 of them were working fine (sending and receiving).

For all 3 I was using the first part of the email address as the userid, e.g., jane.doe, john.doe and joe.blow

For the 1 gmail account that wasn't working (would receive but not send) I changed the userid to the full email address, i.e., joe.blow@gmail.com and now all email accounts are working.

Hope this helps!

I have a gmail acct and a comcast acct (comcast is my isp). I use my gmail for most mail. About a month ago, following the Heartbleed issue, I switched to 2 step authentication for my google acct and mail as suggested. Everything seemed to work ok but I did not realize that while I was getting incoming mail, my gmail smtp server had gone offline and I was automatically switched to the comcast one. After reading a previous reader's post (page 2 or 3 of comments) I went into edit smtp list and went to advanced. The password there was still my original 1 step password. Once I put in my new google provided 2nd step authorization password, gmail smtp was automatically back online.

So, if any of you have recently changed to 2 step authentication and are having problems, apparently that 2nd password has to be entered for both incoming and outgoing mail. Perhaps this will help someone.

I came across a solution that worked for me. Open Keychain Access (I just searches for it). Delete the smtp.mail.yahoo.com entries. Then quit and restart email. It will ask for you passwords and then fixed the issues I was having!!!

Paul.

The post you replied to is 2 years old and is nonsense. (there are no smtp choices on the from line, that's why you can't find them)

If you have a problem that you would like help with please start your own thread, identify your Mac and the version of OSX it runs and any Mail add-ons you may have installed.

Jacking a 2 year old thread that may or may not have anything to do with your problem is unlikely to get you anywhere.