For the past few weeks my Mail has intermittently stopped automatically checking. Sometimes it does and then I might be an hour or so without any mail so I check manually and there will be about five or six messages.
I've tried changing the preferences on and off but I can't think what else I can do.
Anybody any ideas, please?
MacBook Pro (17-inch Early 2009), Mac OS X (10.7.4), 8GB RAM, 500GB HD
Also having this issue. Other small functionality (mostly the sounds associated with sending/receiving messages) also stops working when the 'check for new messages' stops.
Two of us at my company started experiencing this over the last month or two. It's very bad when critical business e-mail suddenly stops arriving, unnoticed until and hour or two later. Apple Support has no knowledge or recommendations for the problem, except their handful of standard tricks, which don't work to correct this issues.
Apple gets more like Microsoft every day. Blaaa.
Any updates here on a fix/work around?
Apple doesn’t routinely monitor the discussions.
Send Apple feedback. They won't answer, but at least will know there is a problem. If enough people send feedback, it may get the problem solved sooner.
Since upgrading to Mavericks I have not had the problem of mail not being checked.🙂
But Mavericks has introduced its own minor problem: Mail no longer checks mail immediately after wake up from sleep, but insteads waits for the selected interval before checking.😟
Same problem here. I think it's been going on for awhile, but I only just realized it. Using Mail 6.6 under OS X 10.8.5. My mail server happens to be POP.
So frustrated with mail. My email just stopped updating. The only way to get new mail to show up was to quit mail and relaunch...EVERY TIME!! I know a lot of you are having the same problem, so I am posting this to hopefully help some of you. It worked for me!!
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Envelope Index
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
In the Finder, select: Go ▹ Go to Folder
From the menu bar, paste into the box that opens (command-V), then press return.
A Finder window will open with the file "Envelope Index" selected. Move that file to your Desktop, leaving the window open. Other files in the window may have names that begin with "Envelope Index". Move those files, if any, to the Trash.
RESTART your computer. Relaunch Mail. It should prompt you to re-import your messages. You may get a warning that the index is damaged and that Mail has to quit. Click OK.
Test. If Mail now works as expected, you can delete the file you moved to the Desktop.
I did as you suggested and after three or four days, it is clear that it did not work.
Mail does check on its own occasionally but usually, when left alone for a while, no mail arrives and when I check manually, there will be quite a few messages which have accumulated on the server.
Try changing the Automatic to 1 or 5 minutes.
It doesn't matter what time I select, it doesn't work.
Does anybody know where Mail stores the data on how frequently to check for new e-mail?
It's definitely not in Mail's preferences.
As this is ongoing for me, I have submitted feedback to Apple - it's really a very basic function which is failing.
I have also been looking elsewhere for an answer and it seems to me that it is probably related to the new option in Mail's checking preferences, i.e. Automatically. And whilst others seem to be having the same problem (see comments on link below), it is kind of reassuring that it's not my system which is broken.
It's clearly nothing to do with the mail server as has been suggested because manually checking mail is successful - it is the Mail application's failure to trigger checks automatically; whether by timing or push.
It's getting a bit tiresome finding that important e-mail has been sitting on the server for hours because of this really fundamental issue.
By the way, I found the answer to my previous question about where the relevant preferences are stored; they are here:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plis t
But unfortunately, although removing (I don't recomend deleting) the .plist does reset Mail's preferences including the mail checking settings, it does not restore a .plist file as applications do if the file is in the Preferences folder and so any new preferences will not be saved again - every time Mail is launched, it does so in a default state.
How hard is this? This has worked only sporadically for a year. IOS email has always worked fine. No other email client I am aware of has these problems.
Perhaps it is time to put the IOS Mail team in charge of the sitution.
I upgraded to Mavericks months ago, and Mail continued to work without any problems. However last week I changed my email accounts from POP to IMAP and immediately this issue appeared.
Messages on the server appear to be downloaded at random intervals. Pressing the "Get New Mail" button has no effect.
After noticing the problem, I switched my "Check for new messages" preference from "Automatically" to "Every Minute," but I noticed no difference.
The only way I've found to get a message downloaded immediately is to close the Mail application and open it again.
I have the Activity window open all the time now and I have noticed that although it does not check for new mail as per the settings in its preferences, Mail checks on launch and when my Mac wakes from sleep.
My girlfriend has an almost identical MacBook Pro with the same versions of Mavericks and Mail but does not have this problem at all.
But I don't get it - surely it's just a simple case of the Mac telling the Mail app to virtually click the 'Get New Messages...' button at the interval in settings, isn't it?
OK, well I'm not sure what the 'Automatically' setting is all about but I'd be happy if the old fashioned clockwork system worked.
Mail not automatically checking
