Can't turn on iCloud Mail

I deleted everything from my computer that had to do with Icloud. Then I rebooted after removing everything and when the system reloaded I with into preferences and then logged back into Icloud and everything returned

I was having the same problem. I was on the phone with a senior tech advisor a couple of times this morning and he ran out of options. I'm running a MBP 17", just upgraded to Mavericks over the weekend. iCloud Mail and Notes couldn't be enabled but all other services worked fine. I even tried reinstalling the OS but that didn't help. His next solution was a format and reinstall, but I just didn't have the time.

After a bit of fiddling around I tried switching to a different WiFi network but that didn't help. Then I switched to my iPhone hotspot. For some reason, that worked! I was able to set up my Mail and Notes with iCloud. I changed my network back to my usual WiFi and was able to continue using iCloud Mail and Notes.

I still have this problem. tried iphone hotspot as you suggest. no joy. somewhat inconvenient. I tried all the other suggestions too. signed out of icloud & back in several times, run disk utility several times & continue to periodically just in case, started in safe mode, tried signing out in safe mode & back in again in safe mode, restarting between. getting fed up with it now. also tried siging in using .me & .icloud rather than .mac. Still nothing. Internet account remoteserver hanging. if i try to run mail & just leave it as some users have suggested machine runs out of memory & freezes up. something to do with .mac & .me & .icloud email accounts all having been used. No good...

never had a problem with notes though.

Any other suggestions to fix?

Me too. Really frustrating. OK on my i phone and ipad, but as I keep a lot of e mails in folders on my mac book pro I don't want to have to keep logging onto icloud and sending the mails to another account I have to be able to file them away.

I've done the stuff mentioned already but no good, still can't be enabled.

Is this problem associated with the recent download? This is the first time I've really had a problem. How does this process work, we just have to wait for someone to come up with an answer? Do Apple monitor this, surely someone must have the answer

Given the volume of content on the discussion boards I doubt Apple regularly reviews them. They are provided by Apple for users to help other users.

There are a couple of options to make sure they know:

1) Go to http://www.apple.com/feedback/ and provide feedback. Any time I find a problem with something I first check the discussion boards. If there aren't any solutions I submit feedback.

2) If you have a product in warranty or Apple Care, go to http://www.apple.com/support/contact/ and chat, call them or schedule a call back. I've used each of these, usually successfully.

Good luck.

removed account last night before I went to be and added it this morning everything loaded except mail and notes, checked the box for mail agaim expecting the usual could not be enabled message, but it set up. Absolutely don't know why. I didn't do anything different from what I did yesterday. So annoying, but now just pleased it's all back.

I'll give that a try. Signed out this morning before going to work. Will sign back in tonight and let you know how I get on...

No change here. Just the same. Deleted icloud account, reinstalled mavericks, enabled icloud again & still the same. Found an anomaly on my iPhone icloud setup & fixed it. Maybe that will make a difference. Will try again later today...

Fixed it.

Found another post with a similar problem - don't want to take credit for someone else's solution!

this is what I did:

The problem was caused by dodgy entries in the accounts.plist file in my User Library folder. It appears that either when I upgraded to Mavericks this file gained many thousands of duplicate entries, or maybe these entries were in there before but previously the OSX/Mail combination was more tolerant. When I removed these the problem with Mail disappeared. Here’s what I did….

1> Make the user Library folder visible - in Mavericks this is a lot easier than Lion/Mountain Lion. Simply open up your user directory in Finder, select menu View>Show View Options, and select “Show Library Folder”

2> Navigate through username>Library>Mail>V2>MailData and select the Accounts.plist file. If this file is multiple megabytes (mine was 40+mb) then this is likely the cause of your problem (once sorted mine ended up at 19k in size!)

3> To be safe, make a copy of this file (I placed the copy on my desktop).

4> Using your chosen text editor (I used Text Wrangler but I’m sure TextEdit would work just fine) open the Accounts.plist in the MailData folder (not your backup copy) and take a look. If it’s the same as me you will find hundreds and hundreds of entries for the same mailbox repeated in there. Mine was an old MSN mailbox that I never use any more (I’ve seen in other forums that other Hotmail type accounts also seem to be the culprits in this context). There will likely be two lots of repeated data, one in the XML “DeliveryAccounts” <array> section, and one lot in the “MailAccounts” <array> section.

5> Delete (keeping in mind the need to select the XML sections correctly from <dict> to </dict> completely) all those extra entries that you found, keeping the mail accounts you do need, in the XML and save the file.

6> Mail should open up nice and fast again and not eat your system

7> If this did not work, and causes problems because of over eager deleting in <5> you can replace your broken Accounts.plist file with your backup and try again.

Glad you got it sorted. I checked mine for what was described in your post and mine was OK.

My mail is still working as mentioned before.

However there are some little things happening that didn't before e.g. deleted messages reappearing and most annoyingly e mails to to my me.com address are delayed, they get to my iphone and ipad a couple of minutes before they appear on my MacBook Pro.

Finally, this fixed my issue with mail. Thank you.

thanks very much for this - i had been mail-less for two months til I did this - my prefs file was over 60MB!

Thank you sooo very much! This solved my issue! I switched my network to my iPhone hotspot & it worked like a magic! Now both Notes & Mail are working perfect with iCloud on my MacBook Pro "17 Mavericks! Once again thank you so much for such an easy and useful trick!

Regards!

I'm glad it helped. I needed to do it again myself a few weeks ago.