Q: Mavericks Mail not sync'ing IMAP act. (Not GMail)

HOW I FIXED APPLE MAIL SYNCING ISSUES WITH GMAIL (AND, I PRESUME ALL IMAPS)

In our long discussion on this, and my own tinkering, I suspected this issue had something to do with Mavericks now keeping all our internet accounts information in the cloud. If you go to settings, Internet Accounts, you can see the list of your various internet accounts. It is no longer possible to completely remove an email account in the Mail app. You can only disable it or enable it. To remove the account, you have to delete from the Internet Accounts menu in settings.

Many users in these forums have suggested deleting the Mail folder in ~/Library then restarting Mail to have it rebuild all your internet accounts. In this scenario, when you restart Apple Mail you're asked to type in the information for an email account. However, I noticed each time I did this within seconds the new Mail folder created in ~/Library upon restart of the Mail app would be populated with information from all of my email accounts and not just the single one I had entered when the Apple Mail was started.

I have suspected that this was part of the problem. Perhaps my settings and such were either messed up caused a glitch when I initially upgraded to Mavericks, and the glitch was forever saved in the iCloud Internet Accounts menu, or in all of my messing around before the so-called fix was issued I had messed something up, which, again, was set in stone in the iCloud Internet Accounts.

I know the Internet Accounts in the settings menu is now stored in iCloud because I use a MacBook Air, and two different iMacs. As soon as you sign in to iCloud on any Mac, that Internet Accounts screen is populated with all your internet accounts.

So here's what I did to get a complete fresh start and it has worked for me.

Step 1:     Quit Apple Mail   

Step 2:      Go to Settings --> Internet Accounts. Delete the Gmail (or the offending IMAP account) account (you'll be asked to remove it across all your OS X computers--say yes). I mean DELETE, not just disable. Hit the minus sign at the bottom left of the list with Gmail highlighted.

Step 3:     Then delete the iCloud account as you did the Gmail account.

Step 4:     Then delete the rest of the internet accounts on the computer.

(I think this sequence is important. You are deleting the offending email account from the iCloud, which should remove it from all your computers. Then you're deleting the iCloud account, which leaves the other internet accounts you have intact on your computer and in the information intact in iCloud. Delete all other internet accounts after the iCloud deletes them only from the particular machine you're working on.)

Step 5:     Go to the Library folder in your users file. (Which you can do by going to the Finder, selecting Go from the top menu, then selecting Go to Folder... typing in this: ~/Library.) Find the Mail folder and drag it to the trash. Empty the trash. If you get a message that a file is in use, restart the computer then empty trash immediately.

Step 6:     Open Mail App. It will ask you to put in information for an email account. Put your GMAIL account in (or your IMAP) account FIRST!! (A MUST!) Give it some time to get everything in there. At this point, you will notice that the problem is gone. Your mail will sync properly, archived/deleted messages will move properly, and read/unread counters will function properly.

Step 7:     Readd the iCloud account (which should then add your other email accounts). I did this reluctantly, but it has worked.

Repeat for all your Mavericks device.

Message was edited by: FriarOP

Congrats, Friar, on all your detective work!

Having now had the experience of having it "work" for a likttle while, then stop working … how long ago did you do all this? And if it was just today, can you post again tomorrow and let us know if it's still working?

Thanks. And if it does, I'll personally nominate you for king of the hill

Will do. I'm pretty confident that this is a lasting solution. But I guess time will tell.

iCloud and Gmail have nothing to do with each other, your post makes little sense.

I understand that. BUT Mavericks is now saving all of your internet accounts login information (what appears under Internet Accounts in the System Settings) in the cloud... your login info, imap address, passwords, etc. for google, icloud, yahoo, twitter, flickr, facebook.

If you have more than one Mavericks device, you can login to iCloud on one of them and it will populate INTERNET ACCOUNTS in System Settings with all your internet accounts (including non iCloud).

When you attempt re-install or re-start Apple Mail app after you have deleted the Mail fodler from your system library, you will notice it's repopulated with information from ALL your internet accounts. That's because the information for those OTHER internet accounts is now saved in iCloud.

FriarOP wrote:

 

I understand that. BUT Mavericks is now saving all of your internet accounts login information (what appears under Internet Accounts in the System Settings) in the cloud..

And that has no connection with your iCloud email account, you meant to say iCloud Keychain I assume.

That may be. I haven't tried turning off Keychain to do this. All I can say is that the process above has worked for me.

Happy for you but I will advise others not to repeat it, it's nonsense.

Perhaps. But it's affecting the Mail folder in ~/Library. If you delete the Mail folder and restart Apple Mail, you are asked to enter an email account. Do that, but then open up ~/Library/Mail/V2 (which you had deleted but is rebuilt with the restart Mail App). Folders for your OTHER email accounts are created.

As you wish. But I find your dismissive attitude utterly amazing when you haven't offered any solutions. The solution is posted. People can take it or leave it.

Gmail is not a standard Imap system, it never will work as a standard Imap system does.

But as you seem to be happy, I am happy for you.

Yes it's very unfair to dismiss someone's efforts to find a problem when you haven't offered a solution or tried it and it fails or know beyond doubt that it won't work. apple have definitely changed something somewhere as it worked beautifully before Mavericks and disastrously now.

I will certainly be trying it out when I get a moment.

Thanks for your efforts FriarOP

Post back, tell us how it goes.

@FriarOP

Frankly, I don't care if you circled your Mac 3 times while chanting magic incanations.

No one else has found a solution —  including the junior programmers Apple must be assigning to legacy applications that no longer have cachet.

If it works (and stays working), I'm in. And you'll have my thanks for posting your detailed solution.

And if it doesn't stay working, that would be useful to know too. I look forward to your news.