Exchange servers and Mavericks Mail

I have tried this and the mailbox rebuild countless times, these are not solutions and the problem will come back.

Many have reported this issue with brand new installs, it is clearly a huge bug.

i'm not having (yet?) the problems others are reporting with my new MacBook Pro using Apple Mail an Exchange but I have noticed one peculiarity someone might be able to explain. I use Apple mail on my desktop with OS X 10.8.5 and when I check the size of my mailboxes on the Exchange server vs that with Apple mail under Mavericks on the MacBook Pro, the MacBook Pro reports always two fewer messages, and yet a larger size by about 900KB. Always.

Does anyone have an explanation? Just a curiosity.

Is anyone else getting this in their Console error log?

I haven't had the time or energy to raise a case with Apple on this, so if people could check and add to any open cases, perhaps it might get them moving.

29/11/2013 5:16:21.638 pm Mail[920]: *** Assertion failure in -[MFEWSSyncFolderItemsResponseMessageOperation handleResponseMessage:withObject:], /SourceCache/Mail/Mail-1822/FrameworkTargets/MailFramework/EWS/MFEWSResponseOpe ration.m:573

Received error response that shouldn't apply to Mail: The request timed out. on EWS response <MFEWSSyncFolderItemsResponseMessageOperation: 0x6100002f1480> (EXECUTING)

(

0 MailCore 0x00007fff8cdcdc8c -[MCAssertionHandler _handleFailureWithPreamble:description:arguments:] + 141

1 MailCore 0x00007fff8cdcdafd -[MCAssertionHandler handleFailureInMethod:object:file:lineNumber:description:] + 215

2 Mail 0x00007fff92036a01 -[MFEWSResponseOperation handleResponseMessage:withObject:] + 834

3 Mail 0x00007fff9203cb60 -[MFEWSSyncFolderItemsResponseMessageOperation executeOperation] + 409

4 MailCore 0x00007fff8ce1ef0a -[MCMonitoredOperation main] + 211

5 Foundation 0x00007fff91a93591 -[__NSOperationInternal _start:] + 631

6 Foundation 0x00007fff91a9323b __NSOQSchedule_f + 64

7 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff89ee72ad _dispatch_client_callout + 8

8 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff89eeb7ff _dispatch_async_redirect_invoke + 154

9 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff89ee72ad _dispatch_client_callout + 8

10 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff89ee909e _dispatch_root_queue_drain + 326

11 libdispatch.dylib 0x00007fff89eea193 _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 40

12 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff88c14ef8 _pthread_wqthread + 314

13 libsystem_pthread.dylib 0x00007fff88c17fb9 start_wqthread + 13

)

I'm not replying specifically to anyone, but wanted to share some tips we have for Outlook 2011 Exchange users.

The Inbox syncs more frequently than any other and should be kept as clean as possible. (this is the number one cause of problems with sync). Do NOT make subfolders under the Inbox.

Exchange Header

Inbox

Folder A <---this is wrong

Drafts

Deleted Items folder

Junk

Folder A <-- this is correct

It's best to move folders using your web interface (OWA). I suggest if you are moving LOTS of folders to delete the Exchange account in Mail and/or Outlook first. Make the changes in OWA then add account and let it download.

We have seen issues where a corrupt message will cause sync to fail at that point. If you know the message subject you can try deleting the message. Other users have found that using accents and symbols in folder names caused problems.

The following is specific for Outlook, but I suspect that Mail is similar.

Any folder with more than a few thousand messages is going to take some time to fully come down when you first sync your account. Due to the design of Outlook's sync engine (and how exchange works), you will see the 512 newest messages in a folder at the initial start of sync then the rest of the folder's contents will be back filled before you see any mail that arrives after this point. This is why it will look like you are not getting new mail when a folder is still going through initial sync. This is also further exacerbated by an Exchange issue where it gets unnecessary change events before the newer mail arrives. If you carefully watch the progress during the sync of a folder with greater than a couple thousand messages, you will see "Updating local..." a lot before the newer mail starts arriving (newer than the initial 512 that come down).

Outlook checks the server for updates every minute, any folder that has updates will subsequently be synced. Since Outlook has a limit on how many folders can be synced at a time, there can be a queue of folders waiting. The Inbox does get high priority so it will generally sync before other folders that also need to sync.

Recommended Mailbox Size Limits

http://blogs.technet.com/b/exchange/archive/2005/03/14/395229.aspx

While Mail does not use the 2GB limit on exporting folders as .mbox file, Outlook does.

Sorry but what do you people think you are doing with your idle threats against Apple...it's funny to read what some of your write. I'm quite sure "chaz" is not the final word on Apple over this issue, you are just working with yet another tech support guy who's hands are tied by the inability to get the answers he wants.

I too am a big important IT admin and see no use in stomping my feet and threating a multi billion dollar company with my scarey social media tatics. Sad.

For the rest of you know-it-all who keep writing "I cannot believe they are ignoring us..." who says they are ignoring you? Just because you are not getting the instantanious answers you want doesn't mean Apple is not hard at work on this, and other issues.

Carboncow - muted

carboncow wrote:

.... Just because you are not getting the instantanious answers you want doesn't mean Apple is not hard at work on this, and other issues.

It would be nice if they let the business users know they ARE working on it in a press release or by having someone from Apple post on the forum that they are paying for. Or a Tweet, something.

Keep stomping feet folks, (or at least keep it bumped up on page 1 of the forum) - we want this fixed in 10.9.1 or earlier. Business is suffering.

You have no idea what you are talking about. It's very apparent they are not working on a fix. They were very vocal about the issue with GMAIL and about getting that resolved. My technician Chazz was told by his higher ups that the problem was exchange related and that they were not working on any fix because from their standpoint it's working just fine.

<Edited By Host>

I talked with two apple support people today and after trying various fixes for an hour they proclaimed that my exchange server hasn't issued an update to support Mavericks yet. I informed them that my iphone and ipad works just fine with the exchange server but they maintained that the problem is the microsoft server hasn't updated to become compliant with Mavericks. Kind of seemed like Apple was pointing the finger at Microsoft. In the end they asked me to get some specifics from my server and provide it to them - they'll see what they can do. Port numbers and such.

Disappointing.

This is the issue. When troubleshooting, you look at what has changed, 99% of the time that's where the problem is.

In this case, Mavericks changed, everything was working fine before.

Therefore, the problem is Mavericks mail and it needs to be fixed or they need to issue a bulletin on what they changed and what Exchange now needs to do to fix it.

Why can't Apple see this?

Good points...considering this thread has been viewed over 20,000 times perhaps it will get their attention. I brought this to the attention of the two support people and they said they would make sure their engineering team is alerted.

Cpc1968,

OMG, Let's hope those support people were just over-loyal and misinformed, and that Apple have not gone down the uber arrogant road without Jobs's supervision.

Looking at some of the other changes, I am hoping that, but not convinced however.

Phil V’s solution seems to have worked the best for me. Although still not quite perfect. I also went into the internet account and deleted the exchange account. I then removed anything related to exchange in the library. I restarted the computer and created the exchange account. It does work, however, it will still freeze up in the activity window on exchange. If I cancel synchronizing exchange and then click get mail it has been better but still not always immediately. I may have missed a couple exchange files to delete, any other thoughts?

I gave up on Apple and have moved to the AirMail app as my Exchange Client. So far very nice :-)

I agree it does work but it's very sophmoric and average at best. The omission of smart albums (or similar) is a make/break for big business.

Although Mail.App needs to work I'm amazed at how many people thing these cheapo apps are better...they some features for sure!