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Exchange servers and Mavericks Mail

It loads it when you open the Mail app, but then no new messages will appear in the Exchange inbox while app is open - fetch new mail and the Activity Window show "Synchronizing Inbox" and jsut sits there and waits.. Close the app and reopen - New Mail appears. Another bug?

Mac mini (Mid 2011), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 23, 2013 7:42 AM

Reply
742 replies

Dec 17, 2013 9:12 AM in response to LD150

I posted yesterday that the update didn't do anything for me.


However, today, I opened the Mail app again, and after about 10 minutes, it fetched all the emails since Mavericks update, so became fully syncronized with the server. For the past few hours since then Mail app is receiving new messages. Fingers crossed, I don't know if this will last...

Dec 17, 2013 9:12 AM in response to LD150

Hi Peter,


i realise signature solution won't help with receiving mails, but it was suggested that i post here the solution to sending issue i was lucky enough to find that helped me.


It definately has cleared up my issue, which i have been trying to solve for weeks!!


Now to fix a problem on my old man's, have transferred him to a new iMac and can't connect to his work mail server, in mail.app or browser webmail, erk!


Think it is a bad security cert somewhere.

Dec 17, 2013 9:27 AM in response to MarkElliott1010

Folks,


I haven't read all the recent updates, but I'm very aware of what the core issue is here. I just wanted to share some real informaton that kind of solved my problem in a way, but doesn't even remotely solve the actual BUG that is in Mail.


As stated in other posts, the problem is related related to either corrupt messsages (or at least "corrupt" in Apple Mail's view), special characters, or some other issue that causes the maibox sync to essentially hang on 1 message. Which may or may not resolve itself, and typically required a full quit of Mail and reopen.


One thing I did about 2 weeks ago was move ALL of my subfolders that were under the Inbox folder to the root of my mailbox (using OWA, not mail!!). As soon as I did that I no longer had any sync issues, in fact I found it extremly annoying because I COULD NOT even reproduce the issue anymore. My understanding is that Mail only actively syncs the Inbox folder, and subfolders, and I think all other folderrs are only refreshed when selected (I could be slightly wrong about this). What this tells me is that some type of message in my inbox subfolders was causing Mail to hang on sync. The even more annoying part is, I tried to move all the subfolders back under the Inbox, and I still couldn't repoduce the issue.


In summary, I moved all the subfolders from under my inbox to the mailbox root, then back, and I haven't had ANY issues with Mail since doing that. Also, I have 2 Exchange account in Mail, both with had this issue and both are resolved after doing this.


While this makes Mail more usable for me now, I am 100% certain that there is still a problem/bug with Apple Mail. This also kind of explains why the Apple engineers can't really get to the root of the problem, because it's so hard to reproduce.



PS, if you want to look at the raw EWS http traffic from Mail, you can launch Mail using this command, which will save MailConnectionLog.txt on the desktop. You can clearly see the problem when examining these logs.


/Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail -LogHTTPActivity YES -LogMaximumBytes 512 >& ~/Desktop/MailConnectionLog.txt &

Dec 17, 2013 9:41 AM in response to ibrennan

I'm not sure I can agree with your conclussion. I have zero user created subfolders in my exchange account and still have the issue. The only folders I have beyond my mail root are the Apple created folders such as "Apple To Do," "Deleted Messages" (which is empty)," "Sent Messages" (also empty since those live in the other "Sent" mailbox), "Trash" (also empy since those messages live under the "Trash" mailbox, and the "RSS Feeds" which live under the seperate Exchange account heading.


And this reminds me, why the heck are there unused duplicate folders in different areas of Mail for the same accounts?? It's mind boggling. Exchange obviously makes it own heiarchy of directories. Apple seems to add their own on top of it which just make for more confusion. There's even some of this with their own iCould/MobileMe/.Mac accouts I have as well.

Dec 17, 2013 9:55 AM in response to cameronproaudio

Do you have a large number of messages in your regular inbox? Also, you shouldn't have duplicate folders folders like that... Apple Mail automatically assigns your Exchange folders to the primary Sent, Drafts, Trash (Deleted Items) folders when you add the account. Do you have "store messages on sever" selected for sent, drafts and trash? You should.


I'm not sure how it's possible for you to have it set up that way with Exchange & Mail. With IMAP it's a different story, and you have to manually "assign" IMAP folders to the special system folders (sent, drafts, deleted/trash, etc).

Dec 17, 2013 10:58 AM in response to arsdc

I have the same problem and I have found that quitting and relaunching Mail does the trick.


I am thinking of switching back to Entourage simply because this is kind of annoying. I actually used to use Entourage, which I liked a lot because the Address Book, Calendar and email were nicely integrated. However, when offered the opportunity to have nicer intergration with my iPhone, I made the switch. Apple is oddly enough lagging Microsoft in this area. Having the Address Book separate from the email app doesn't make much sense to me.

Dec 17, 2013 11:32 AM in response to MarkElliott1010

The update to Mail (7.1 ?) hasn't helped resolve to Exchange problem for me.


Still can't send any message with an attachment over 60k; messages don't download or send reliably etc.


This problem is costing me too much time and money so I've had to (regrettably) ditch Mail and move to Outlook.


I hope this is resolved soon, but perhaps I'm being too optimistic...?

Dec 17, 2013 11:36 AM in response to Johnfx

OWA is Outlook Web Access (or just simply your webmail). You can try moving the subfolders to the root of your mailbox using OWA if you have access. I just don't recommend using Apple Mail to move a large number of messages because who knows what will happen...


This is a pretty technical problem, so the best possible thing you can do for everyone is to call Apple and open a case and complain about this specific problem. Nothing will ever get fixed until that happens enough.

Exchange servers and Mavericks Mail

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