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Level 4

1,358 points

Yosemite Mail still has sync problems with Gmail - any solutions?

I notice that Yosemite Mail still has sync problems with Gmail. After running for some hours, I noticed there were 6 emails in my Gmail account that had not synced over the past hour.

In the meanwhile, for safety's sake (don't want to miss emails!) I'm back to Mailplane. But I wonder if anybody knows of a solution to this long term problem first introduced in Mavericks. Works fine in iOS Mail though.

Thanks,

doug

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), i5, 512 GB SSD, 16 GB RAM

Posted on Oct 18, 2014 9:10 AM

162 replies

Oct 5, 2015 12:51 PM in response to Doug Lerner2

Well, I've already seen :-( Though it's been very responsive, I have a new problem. After using it for a couple of days I happen to look in Gmail (actually, Mailplane) and I had about 50 drafts in my DRAFT folder. I hadn't even created any drafts.

FJ9999

Level 1

15 points

Oct 12, 2015 12:36 AM in response to Larry McJunkin

That happened to me in Mail when in:

Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors > Drafts

The checkbox "Store draft messages on server" was checked. I turned it off and it stopped doing that. Don't know Mailplane to know what the equivalent setting might be.

Oct 12, 2015 5:36 AM in response to FJ9999

FJ9999, I thought I had it unchecked. I'll add my account to Mail and try it again. I'll let you know.

Oct 13, 2015 8:19 AM in response to Larry McJunkin

FJ9999, that did it. I honestly thought I had "Drafts" unchecked originally, but I must not have. Since this wasn't my original post I can only give you credit for helping me. Thanks.

FJ9999

Level 1

15 points

Dec 27, 2015 10:19 AM in response to FJ9999

Coming back to this thread after three months of using Mail under El Capitan, and I want to confirm that all of the problems that I've had for many years with Mac Mail have been fixed. I have 650,000 messages in various folders, with some folders containing 150,000 messages, and everything works beautifully. No syncing-and-resyncing nightmares, no long delays, no having to restart the app, etc. Everything functions quickly, even with the huge e-mail archive that I have.

The only thing that remains a possible issue is search, as some messages seem to be missing from the results via Mac Mail. Thus, I use Gmail via the web for searches when Mac Mail doesn't give me what I want. I think part of the issue may be that Gmail will search within attachments while Mac Mail won't (I don't think), and there seems to be other inconsistencies in how each handles searches. So, it might be more a function of my not understanding the complicated aspects of how search works in Mac Mail as opposed to it being a bug.

In any event, for those of you who left Mac Mail, it's time to take another look. I'm so relieved that it's finally fixed and that I am able to use the features I like in Mac Mail without dealing with all the crap.

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,358 points

Jan 12, 2016 5:06 AM in response to FJ9999

After seeing your message I decided, after a long hiatus, to try Mail under El Capitan and see how it was.

Everything was fine until my first reply. After hitting send the app crashed and I sent a report to Apple.

Also, the preferences to reply from the same account were not working and the default reply email kept on getting set to my icloud email address.

Back to MailPlane again. Sigh.

doug

Csound1

Level 9

60,027 points

Jan 12, 2016 9:06 AM in response to Doug Lerner2

How long have you been trying to make it work Doug?

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,358 points

Jan 12, 2016 8:45 PM in response to Csound1

Off and on since it went wonky during the upgrade to Mavericks. Whenever I hear a rumor that it is maybe working again I try to give it a chance.

I was starting over after having cleared everything out and recreating the accounts from scratch.

doug

Jan 13, 2016 5:35 AM in response to Doug Lerner2

I have to agree with Doug on this one. I've been trying just as long and have been participating in this thread since the onset...Mail.app still has unsolvable issues with Gmail. If you're a casual email user with just a few messages, or an email spartan who doesn't keep every message, Mail.app works fine. I would still rather use Mail.app for several reasons, but like Doug...I'm back to Mailplane.

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,358 points

Jan 13, 2016 5:46 AM in response to Larry McJunkin

Larry,

I decided, though, to try to stick with it today to see how it is going. It hasn't crashed again yet, and my mails are all synced. I made sure to add one account back in at a time, waited for all the messages to download and then added the next account.

I ran into a few problems which I needed to work around. For example, every time you add a new account, if you have iCloud mail enabled the default send address for all the accounts turns into your iCloud address! The solution (which I got from Apple support) is to disable and then re-enable iCloud, which then restores the proper default address for each account. Strange I know. Apple Support said it was a known problem and doing this "kicks it."

Then I ran into that problem where all sent email also ended up with multiple copies in the Trash. That is solved (for now) by unchecking the "save drafts on server" option for each account.

You also have to double-check the smtp server settings for each Gmail account to make sure password authentication is properly set because that doesn't seem to happen automatically.

There is also a buglet where if you change the name of the smtp server it also changes the name of the account description to match - so both have to be the same.

Anyway, I'm still playing with it today. Worst case is that I now have an offline backup of all my emails and I can switch back to Mailplane tomorrow if something goes wonky again.

Like you, if Mail.app worked well there are various reasons I would like to use it. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

doug

Jan 13, 2016 5:52 AM in response to Doug Lerner2

Doug, I still keep it running, but just don't use it for my primary email. I'll also keep testing it and see what happens.

Doug Lerner2 Author

Level 4

1,358 points

Jan 13, 2016 6:13 AM in response to Larry McJunkin

Add another oddity - the Archives folder frequently has an unread count on it. I "mark all as read" but a number appears there again in a little while.

doug

Csound1

Level 9

60,027 points

Jan 13, 2016 6:24 AM in response to Doug Lerner2

They are put there by Gmail, adjust your settings

FJ9999

Level 1

15 points

Jan 13, 2016 9:00 AM in response to Doug Lerner2

Doug,

Are you using the Mail app in iOS as well? If so, are the problematic messages ones that you delete from iOS rather than from your Mac? If so, you need to go to a special place in Google to change some settings; otherwise, you get some behavior that is unexpected (e.g., messages deleted on iPhone/iPad not put in the trash, or the return address that you specify doesn't work [in situations where you want your return address to be different than how it's set up in the Mail app]).

Here is what I did:

m.google.com/sync/settings (do this from the iOS device)
Set all devices to "Enable 'send mail as" for this device"
Set all devices to "Enable 'delete mail as trash' for this device"

Here are a couple of references for more info on this.

http://www.coolheadtech.com/resources/get-your-iphone-to-delete-messages-in-goog le-apps

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6542480

I've needed to do these steps on each iOS device to ensure that things work correctly. This might not be related to your issue, but thought I'd mention it.

FJ9999

Level 1

15 points

Jan 13, 2016 9:03 AM in response to Larry McJunkin

Larry,

As I mentioned in other posts, I have 650,000 messages saved, and it's finally working well for me. What exactly are the problems that you are experiencing under El Capitain?

You might want to go back to an earlier post where I detailed how I set things up in El Capitain. I wiped everything out and started over, and I didn't add all e-mailboxes back at one time.

Yosemite Mail still has sync problems with Gmail - any solutions?