unable to send emails; smtp error message

Is it working for you now?

Yes, it has been working all day and the locks have not returned. A few days ago I thought possibly the locks were appearing after the computer was awoken from sleep so I turned of the sleeping feature. It's still off and I'm not going to test that theory until mail has been working consistently without the locks.

I tested The House Captn's macmail today and only got the "password loop to pacbell.server" question once and hers has not locked once or has the locks appeared. Same set up with Pacbell only difference is eamil address. Actually it's just a second mailbox on the same account. I'll test out the laptop a little later. The ipone has had no problems at all.

So far so good and I'll keep my fingers crossed. It's usually the first thing I check after getting up in the early a.m. I also set up a another Gmail IMAP account in macmail and it's had no problems.

Hi Everybody:

Our office server and subaccounts stopped working at 11 a.m. Oct. 2 insofar as SMTP. We spent over $100 on worthless ATT 360, paid a Mac expert for four hours time and it could never get fixed. We tried everything, all the different settings, bla-bla. Thing is, I have the same OS, the same DSL service at home and there is absolutely no problem. At work, we have a business account and pay more. You'd think ATT would give a ****, but of course they don't. They just blame Apple.

When the expert was here, after about three hours on the phone, he was connected to someone who admitted a memo had gone out about this problem and support people were SUPPOSED to all know about it, rather than hustle 360 service or ******** their way and waste our time.

The one difference between home and work is that at work, we send lots of pdf attachments. We are a newspaper and send ad proofs back and forth as well as text attachments. I keep thinking there is some kind of usage redflag or something. We have had multiple experiences of constantly having to resubmit passwords, something which never happens at home. We are on a replacement modem, but the problem existed with both, insofar as frequent requests for password.

Anyway, I gave up and downloaded Thunderbird and it worked perfectly, in fact, faster than Mail ever has.

I have no idea what is going on, other than the multiple phenomena: ATT is too huge. ATT is working WITH Apple with all these iPhones. Apple wants us to use iCloud mail accounts, right? I mean, you can spin your mental wheels for hours trying to figure it out..

I think Apple needs to update Mail. MAYBE that would work, maybe not.

All my outgoing mail servers went offline simultaneously yesterday afternoon, according to Mail.

Yahoo, Google, and 3 "indepdendent" providers. I cannot send any email. I have not installed any updates recently. It worked yesterday morning, and then it just stopped working. All Connection Doctor tells me is "Could not connect to this SMTP server. Check your network connection and that you have entered the correct information/check your SSL." I haven't touched these settings in months.

I had hoped I'd wake up and it would be working as suddenly as it died, but alas, no.

Any additional thoughts from anyone?

veronicamae,

Could your ISP have changed something that affects your ability to reach those servers? Some ISPs try to force outbound mail to go through their own servers.

I called them and they were very helpful, but said they don't block such traffic. Of note is that I CAN send email through these same servers on my iPhone, which is connected to the very same WiFi my computer is. So, this is a computer/Mail thing.

Yahoo worked for a second a few minutes ago and is now offline again. 😟

FYI, there is no guarantee that your iPhone is using the same server as your Mac, it is rather unlikely in fact.

I work for a company that uses a industry standard mail hosting company. We have thousands of customers using Mail to access the system. Why is it that the password will get randomly cleared and set to optional in SMTP outbound settings? Anyone see this before?

I haven't seen the smtp password get randomly cleared, but I have seen the password get consistently cleared immediately after putting it in for the first time and saving it.

Without fail, each time I put the password in, save and close. The very next time I go back into the smtp settings, the password is gone. Puttting it back in the second time seems to hold. It's just become part of my routine to always do it twice.