Q: Mail not automatically checking

Same here, Dreiss.  Same Mail version, same symptoms.  Hey, at least you can sleep in the knowledge that you're not alone.  Humor aside, it's a royal pain in the butt - made even more so by the understanding that Mail is an integral part of OS/X, and therefore it can't be reinstalled by itself.  The classic support response of "let's restore the OS" makes me cringe every time I hear it - talk about using a sledgehammer to crack a walnut.

Let's hope it's something the Cupertino gurus are aware of and addressing, but I'm not holding my breath. It's only been happening lately, so I suspect a "fix" went bad somewhere.  Ho hum...

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.

Feedback

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.

Try changing the Automatic to 1 or 5 minutes.

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.