Apple Mail app no longer connecting to incoming mail server

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Level 1

94 points

Apple Mail app no longer connecting to incoming mail server

Hi.

I use the integral Apple Mail email client under OS X 10.8.

Until this afternoon, all was well and I could send & receive my emails without any problem. (Suggesting that all the server settings & preferences are correct in Mail.)

This afternoon Mail suddenly was unable to connect to my incoming (IMAP) mail server, and I still cannot get it to connect.

I do still receive email from the same server on my iPhone though, so that suggests that the server itself is working correctly.

I've tried quitting Mail and re-launching it, and I've tried editing the server settings, saving the new settings and then reverting to the old ones and re-saving, but to no effect.

The problem exists on both of the user accounts we have set up on this Mac, and both user accounts use the same IMAP server, but with different names of course.

I'm at a loss as to what might have occurred here, and an even further loss as to what else I can try to resolve the problem.

Anyone any ideas please?

ps. While I was typing this an email arrived in my Mail inbox! BUT... I still have the little !-triangles by the side of my account in Mail, and when I click on them the 'Alert' tells me that there 'may be a problem with the server or network' and, "The server returned the error: The connection to the server “imap.mail.yahoo.com” on port 993 timed out."

So it looks like I'm getting emails somehow, but there is still a problem somewhere.

MacBook Pro, OS X Mountain Lion

Posted on Oct 11, 2013 9:31 AM

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Answer 1

Jan 29, 2017 2:36 PM in response to MikeInCanberra

After YEARS of trying to find a solution, THIS (PRAM reset) fixed it.

Whodathoughtit?

Using Mail's Connection Doctor, logins to the IMAP and SMTP servers are now quick (under 5s vs... forever spinning!), and consistently so: hitting Check Again several times confirms this.

@MikeInCanberra, THANK YOU for posting your findings. May it help many hundreds thousands millions of other Mail users!

Now, if only Mail had Snooze, Delayed Send, and integration with popular task managers, I'd be over the moon. But I'll settle for getting connected reliably. For now.

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Answer 2

Feb 20, 2017 5:27 PM in response to itsapplemike

Sigh. I'm disappointed to say it only lasted a few days. That's days longer than any other attempt, but it's still not a fix.

For those of you who did a PRAM reset, can you let us know if you found it a permanent fix? Or any other solution that really, truly stuck?

Many thanks in advance.

I've tried a couple other mail clients, and while they're great in their own ways, they kinda have some significant shortfalls (yes, they sucked in parts) in other ways that mattered to me.

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Answer 3

Eric Root

Level 10

684,057 points

Oct 11, 2013 9:39 AM in response to Steve Zodiac

Apple support article.

Troubleshooting sending and receiving email messages

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Answer 4

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

94 points

Oct 11, 2013 10:21 AM in response to Eric Root

Thanks Eric. I got through all that with no real answer to my problem; everything was correct in the server settings and I have no 3rd party firewall. ESP assured me server was working, (evidenced anyway by my iPhone receiving emails), but they do not support client software.

However, the email notification of your post arrived while I was having my tea (my iPhone beeped) and, when I went back upstairs to read through the troubleshooting guide properly on my Mac I also went into Mail to follow the link from there.

Guess what? Mail was now connected to the server and the little !-triangles had disappeared. And I had done absolutely nothing whatever since I posted my original question.

Strange...

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Answer 5

Eric Root

Level 10

684,057 points

Oct 11, 2013 10:36 AM in response to Steve Zodiac

Occasionally I get the same behavior, especially with iCloud.

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Answer 6

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

94 points

Oct 12, 2013 8:28 AM in response to Steve Zodiac

Okay... Now this is getting SERIOUSLY strange!

After Mail was apparently working fine, and connnecting with my mail servers from tea-time yesterday onwards, I now see that the problem has returned. But it's not as straightforward as I'd thought it was.

I opened Mail just now and the !-triangles were showing against my mail account names again, indicating no connection with the incoming server, like before.

So I typed myself a short test message and sent it to myself. It seemed as if Mail hadn't sent the message; in the 'Mail Activity' section at bottom left the outgoing test message appeared, but only made it half way across the progress bar. The progress bar got stuck with 'Zero KB/s' showing by it.

I quit, and then relaunched, Mail a couple of times, whereupon the test message showed up as a '1' against 'Outbox', and in Mail Activity the progress bar reappeared and went halfway across and then stopped again.

But then I realised that my iPhone was pinging. And when I looked on that I had received the test message on that three times, even though it was showing on my Mac as never having been sent. It seemed that each time I re-launched Mail it actually sent my message, even though it was 'telling me' that it had not done so. How weird is that?

And then, after about five minutes, and while I was busy typing this post, I heard the familiar 'whoosh' noise of mail sending a message, and the progress bar had disappeared from the Mail Activity box. It now looked as if Mail had finally sent my test message, and yet it didn't arrive on my iPhone a fourth time following the 'whoosh'.

I'm completely lost now as to what might be causing this...

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Answer 7

Steve Zodiac Author

Level 1

94 points

Oct 19, 2013 2:30 AM in response to Steve Zodiac

Okay, just a quick line to say that I think I've solved this problem.

I spoke on the telephone with Apple Support for fifty minutes or so, and they had me re-set some stuff, but it basically made no difference and didn't solve the issue..

Then it dawned on me that, although my Mac wasn't connecting to the email server correctly, my iPhone was connecting perfectly. This indicated that it wasn't a server issue, and I'd done as much as I could with Mail to check all the settings were correct, and I was scratching my head as to what else could be causing the trouble.

The only other 'link in the chain' that I could think of was my broadband router or modem. I remembered that I think I'd installed new firmware in my Time Capsule router a week or so ago and, although I was apparently getting a good, solid and fast broadband signal though it, I decided to try recycling both my modem and router.

I've not had any mail server connectivity issues since I did that dual recycle, so I think that it was either the router or my modem. Weird, I know, but worth considering if you have similar problems.

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Answer 8

Dec 27, 2013 9:45 PM in response to Steve Zodiac

I'm having the exact problem, that is, my iPhone on a cellular signal (Like Verizon LTE) gets all IMAP mail messages perfectly, but my Mac Pro, on Time Warner cables cannot connect to the iMAP server.

However, if I connect my iPhone to my Time Warner Wireless Network, it fails. If I connect my Mac Pro to my iPhone Cellular Hotspot, IMAP works perfectly!

I tried cycling my modem and Airport Extreme router, but that didn't fix anything.

If anyone else has seen this issue, please let me know! Thanks.

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Answer 9

Jul 16, 2014 6:28 PM in response to dogfishbird

I have had this same issue on off for sometime with iCloud on both my macbook Air and my iMac

A little about my setup

I have an adsl router (Billion) than my iMac connects directly via ethernet.

I also have 2 Airport Extremes one acts an extender to the other. One of them also connects directly via ethernet to the adsl router.

My macbook air connects to via the Airport Extremes Wirelessly.

I have 2 iCloud accounts that are setup on all my devices.

From time to time 1 of the iCloud accounts gets the little triangle warning sign next to it saying it can't connect to p07 blah blah.me etc etc

However the other account still connects without issue.

The iCloud account setup on my iPhone still continues to connect without issue if I use my cell phone provider and not wifi... however if I connect to wifi I get a connection issue on the exact same account as my macbook air and iMac.

In the past I have found the quickest road to home is power cycle (reboot) my adsl router this restores the connection and I am back on my way to getting mail without issue.

Today when it happened I decided to look a little deeper into the issue.

Looking deeper into my router logs I noticed in the event log I was getting blacklisted events for an ip address I cleared the blacklist on my router and like magic my iCloud mail started working again.

I will keep looking into the why its getting blacklisted but I hope this helps others who are still scratching there head as to what could be the cause of there problem... It just maybe the same as mine.

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Answer 10

Aug 17, 2014 3:31 PM in response to shanefrommaudsland

I started having this same problem yesterday after installing the Safari 7.0.6 update. This has to be a coincidence.

I have 11 email accounts setup in Apple Mail. The only one working now is my work exchange email. The rest are either accounts I host on my own OS X Mavericks Server using IMAP and SMTP over SSL except for two of them which are GMAIL and iCloud.

Same issue. The iMac just displays the warning triangle symbol and when I click I get the Unable to Connect dialog with the message.

There may be a problem with the mail server or network. Verify the settings for account “iCloud” or try again.

The server returned the error: The server “p03-imap.mail.me.com” cannot be contacted on port 993.

I have verified the settings on all of my IOS devices and they are the same. As with the original post, my IOS devices are all able to connect to all of my accounts without any problems.

To try and troubleshoot this issue I switched to another user account and tried to connect to one of my mail accounts and got the same Unable to Connect issue. I then opened another email client (Thunderbird) and configured the email account exactly the same there (IMAP on port 993 and SMTP on port 587). Thunderbird was able to connect and retrieve my mail without any problems. As an additional test I opened up terminal and tried "telnet p03-imap.mail.me.com 993". I was immediately connected to the iCloud server.

To sum up this does not appear to be a problem with the iMac, the user account, my mail server or the network. It appears to be a problem with Apple Mail only.

I wonder if there is a plist file or something that needs nuking.

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Answer 11

Oct 28, 2014 11:34 AM in response to MikeInCanberra

I had very similar issues with Yahoo and Mac Mail, with system 10.9.5. Some combination of the following steps finally fixed the problem after about 6 hours of troubleshooting. Turning off peripherals, turning off router for a while to re-set it, deleting and re-establishing Yahoo account on Mac Internet Accounts, checking and re-entering Yahoo POP server settings in Mail (avoiding old Plus and IMAP servers), clicking "Rebuild" in Mail and unchecking "organize by conversation." And several re-boots. Throughout, my iPhone accessed Yahoo email without problem, sending and receiving. At one point, Mac Mail could send but not receive email. The turning points seemed to be the peripherals off (after which I could send email) and the router reset (after which a few emails came in, but not most). After more more tinkering it began to pull in all the old incoming emails. I can't offer anyone much advice, but perhaps something in my experience will help you overcome this scary problem! chris hoh

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Answer 12

Oct 28, 2014 2:02 PM in response to Steve Zodiac

I found a solution to the issue I was having with apple mail.

I think it has something to do with the feature that retrieves your mail while the computer is asleep. My guess is that apple stores your email account details in parameter ram (PRAM) so it can check accounts without waking the Operating System.

I have encountered the mail retrieval issue twice now and both times I have been able to fix it by resetting the PRAM. For most apple computers this can be done by shutting down your mac and powering it back on, then hold down the Command + Option + P + R keys at the same time. Wait until you hear the startup chime for the second time, then release the keys and let your mac boot normally. If this key combination doesn't work for your mac you may need to search for "reset pram your mac model" to find out the correct way for your mac.

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Answer 13

Rah101

Level 1

0 points

Nov 12, 2014 12:25 PM in response to MikeInCanberra

This did it for me

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Answer 14

trikrich

Level 1

26 points

Dec 9, 2014 1:03 AM in response to MikeInCanberra

After years without issues Mail.app suddenly didn't connect to any server this morning, though it says in the connection doctor that it's still connected to the Internet.

The PRAM reset solved my problem! I didn't use this reset for years and even thought that it wasn't needed anymore. But it seems that it's still to keep in mind in certain cases.

The computer in question is usually awake 24/24, but fell asleep this night.

That seems to affirm you guess, MikeInCanberra. Thank you very much!

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Answer 15

rbid1

Level 1

8 points

Dec 30, 2014 7:11 AM in response to MikeInCanberra

Well done. Worked for me as well after many other failed "solutions". Wouldn't have guessed a PRAM reset would do it but live and learn. Basic troubleshooting guide: reboot, repair permissions, reset PRAM, etc.

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