Exchange servers and Mavericks Mail

There were several improvements in 10.9.3 but Mavericks Mail.app remains subpar compared to all previous versions. In particular, all of the following problems are widely reported among hundreds of local users:

1. Inbound Exchange mail will 'cork' -- I've watched 2-3 hours of mail never show up until Mail.app is restarted
2. Outbound Exchange mail will randomly delay 10 minutes to 2 hours, sometimes requires full reboot
3. Inbound IMAP mail is consistently slower than any previous version. My ML desktop and my android phone see new mail 1-2 minutes before Mavericks every time, and sometimes up to 5 minutes faster. All of them are set on IDLE and tcpdump on Mavericks shows the IDLE messages are received and accepted, but the results don't appear in the inbox until minutes later.
4. Deletes often fail to synchronize to IMAP servers. You'll see messages you deleted and which were copied to the Trash folder successfully reappear in the Inbox or folder a few minutes after they were removed. Debugging on the server side shows the flags were never set.
5. Mail.app entirely freezes up and requires Force Quit at least once a week.

There are a significant number of problems which are inconsistent from person to person. The general conclusion is that Mavericks Mail.app is fragile and prone to internal deadlocks.

I hope that you receive this response in e-mail, as posts containing technical content about bugs in Apple software get Disappeared here.

jorhett wrote:

1. Inbound Exchange mail will 'cork' -- I've watched 2-3 hours of mail never show up until Mail.app is restarted
2. Outbound Exchange mail will randomly delay 10 minutes to 2 hours, sometimes requires full reboot
3. Inbound IMAP mail is consistently slower than any previous version. My ML desktop and my android phone see new mail 1-2 minutes before Mavericks every time, and sometimes up to 5 minutes faster. All of them are set on IDLE and tcpdump on Mavericks shows the IDLE messages are received and accepted, but the results don't appear in the inbox until minutes later.
4. Deletes often fail to synchronize to IMAP servers. You'll see messages you deleted and which were copied to the Trash folder successfully reappear in the Inbox or folder a few minutes after they were removed. Debugging on the server side shows the flags were never set.
5. Mail.app entirely freezes up and requires Force Quit at least once a week.

None of those things occur in my office, all Mavericks, all Exchange clients.

I've been using Apple's Mail client with my employer's (a university) Exchange server since Snow Leopard. I've had none of the issues described above and things are generally faster with Mavericks and with fewer problems than with any prior version of OS X.

One trick I've learned is that with each major update to Mac OS X (eg, 10.8 to 10.9), it's better to completely delete my Exchange account and start a new one.

Scott Newman wrote:

One trick I've learned is that with each major update to Mac OS X (eg, 10.8 to 10.9), it's better to completely delete my Exchange account and start a new one.

+1

One trick I've learned is that with each major update to Mac OS X (eg, 10.8 to 10.9), it's better to completely delete my Exchange account and start a new one.

Most of these systems are Mavericks from start, not upgrades. We are blocking existing systems from upgrading due to the huge list of issues we have open with Apple support.

Csound1 wrote:

jorhett wrote:

1. Inbound Exchange mail will 'cork' -- I've watched 2-3 hours of mail never show up until Mail.app is restarted
2. Outbound Exchange mail will randomly delay 10 minutes to 2 hours, sometimes requires full reboot

...

Mail.app entirely freezes up and requires Force Quit at least once a week.

None of those things occur in my office, all Mavericks, all Exchange clients.

Given that I've talked to every other large installation in the SF Bay Area and they have all seen these problems, and that Apple has officially acknowledged these issues to us, clearly indicates that the issues do exist.

Very recently I was talking with someone who claimed he wasn't seeing any issues. While we were talking, his phone binged with a new mail. We stood there and waited 9 minutes before it showed up in Mail.app. So I think perhaps the "no issues" crowd may simply not be paying attention 😟 I mean heck, most people prefer less e-mail 😉 so perhaps they simply aren't complaining. As stated before, I have PCAP files showing the problems.

A few hundred Mail users, all fine now on 10.9.3. A few minor hiccups in Mac Mail but they've always been there.

jorhett wrote:

Csound1 wrote:

jorhett wrote:

1. Inbound Exchange mail will 'cork' -- I've watched 2-3 hours of mail never show up until Mail.app is restarted
2. Outbound Exchange mail will randomly delay 10 minutes to 2 hours, sometimes requires full reboot

...

Mail.app entirely freezes up and requires Force Quit at least once a week.

None of those things occur in my office, all Mavericks, all Exchange clients.

Given that I've talked to every other large installation in the SF Bay Area and they have all seen these problems,

Do you think I am stupid?

Good luck with your tale.

I agree with Csound1, most issues resolved, test it out yourself then upgrade your clients.

@musicservice: I gave up on Mavericks Mail recently, and switched my Exchange account to Airmail Beta. Must say this was a good move. Airmail has worked swiftly and flawlessly so far with what Mail was becoming highly unreliable.

Note: my server backend is not a genuine Exchange server but a Kerio Connect. The symptoms I've experienced match the ones described on this list though.

I'd say it's about trust. Apple lost mine regarding Mail. So much money. So few fixes. A few-people startup seems to be way better at it (as always...!)

Mail connected to my Exchange server failed just after I upgraded to Mavericks. Tried various solutions. Turned to OWA on the exchange server and this worked.

Went back to Mail based upon this thread: cancelled my account, re-connected. Able to send and receive emails, although with delay as compared to my iphone or iPad.

Other issue: some email folders have not synchronized fully with my Exchange folders, while this works on iPhone and iPad. Not acceptable.

Cannot lose anymore time with deficient Mail/Maverick/Exchange relationships...

Send us a post card when they work again together...

I am testing Armail app: looks good until now.

If you want a notification it would be helpful if you told us how.

Well,

i did test Airmail - it work worse than native Mail app with my Exchange.

and i can mention, that all apps including outlook for windows works bad with EWS in opposite to ActivSync used before.

all mobile devices, including ios, still using ActivSync and receiving mail 3-100 seconds faster than any application using EWS.

so, what?

i do think, that this is time to start blame microsoft on bad implementation of EWS. thats it.

zloibubr wrote:

i do think, that this is time to start blame microsoft on bad implementation of EWS. thats it.

That or badly configured autodiscover services on the Exchange server.

As Microsoft still refuse to deploy ActivSync for Macs (and PC's) we are stuck with it.

We do have couple of Exchange servers distributed over the world and failover in case of malfunctiona of on of servers. So, i think, its hard to blame our admins as this still works on 15k mailbox size organization 🙂

Anyway, things got worse day by day.

The only question i have, how this was working without any issues before Maverics? Can you explain?