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User profile for user: D.R.C.
D.R.C. Author
User level: Level 2
189 points

Apple Mail won't retrieve new mail from Yahoo IMAP

I've been using Apple Mail with my Yahoo/Rogers account via IMAP for months with no problems.

Starting a few weeks ago, new mail in the Yahoo Inbox does not get delivered to Apple Mail.

I know there's lots of new mail - I logged into mail.yahoo.com with Safari, and see lots of unread messages in the inbox.


It's not a password problem. The Connection Doctor shows 'green': access to both the IMAP and SMTP servers is successful.

I have many other IMAP folders configured, and they all sync fine between Yahoo and the Mac.


Apple Mail is configured to use imap.mail.yahoo.com, port 993 with SSL.


I've tried:

- rebooting the iMac.

- quitting/restarting Apple Mail

- taking account offline, then back on-line.

- Ctrl-clicking on the Inbox and forcing it to Synchronize "Yahoo Mail".

- calling Apple. I spent an hour on the phone with a pleasant tech there. He concluded it's a Yahoo problem.


I found one thing that fixed it temporarily: last week I deleted my e-mail account from Apple Mail. Of course, this deleted all my mailboxes in Apple Mail. Years of messages vanished. Then I quit Mail, restarted it, and configured it anew with my Yahoo account credentials. Mail then proceeded to log on to the Yahoo server and sync everything over IMAP. It took quite a while (over an hour), but eventually everything in my Inbox, Sent folder, and a couple dozen folders ('mailboxes') of saved messages reappeared. Including all the unread mail that had been waiting on the Yahoo mail server.


That was a week ago, and my Apple Mail inbox had receiving new e-mail with no problems until two days ago. Once again, new incoming messages are not getting synced. This 'fix' (delete all messages and resync from scratch) is not a practical solution.


Any ideas?


(iMac has 10.8.5. Mail is 6.6)

Posted on Nov 19, 2014 2:46 PM

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32 replies
User profile for user: D.R.C.
D.R.C. Author
User level: Level 2
189 points

Nov 22, 2014 6:21 AM in response to D.R.C.

OP has some more info on this problem.

I got help from a friend who also has a Mac with 10.8.5. Configured my Yahoo account in Apple Mail on his machine, using exactly the same setup (my Yahoo credentials, imap.mail.yahoo.com, etc).


It works fine. The contents of my Yahoo Inbox sync over to the Apple Mail inbox on his Mac.


But not on my Mac, unless I delete the Yahoo account in its entirety (on Mail) and then resync the mailboxes from scratch.

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User profile for user: D.R.C.
D.R.C. Author
User level: Level 2
189 points

Jan 14, 2015 2:50 AM in response to Riiich

@riiich,

As I last reported, I temporarily 'fixed' it by deleting the account from Apple Mail and creating it again. Thanks to IMAP, Mail then synced all the mail folders (took a couple of hours - I have a lot of mail folders), and then it was working again. For a few days. Then the problem returned - new mail arriving in my Yahoo Inbox would not sync to the Inbox in Apple Mail.


I spent hours trying to resolve it. Changed password. Rebuilt Mail's index. Ran Disk Utility on my hard drive. Etc. Etc. I have a lot of server-side folders (>30), and thought that maybe Apple+Yahoo were screwing up due the large number of folders (a.k.a. mailboxes) to sync. So I migrated a lot of the folders off the server (setting up new mailboxes On The Mac) in which to file my messages. That didn't help. Meanwhile, I started using Yahoo's webmail interface so I could get my new mail. Then one morning (perhaps a week later), the inbox spontaneously started syncing again. I had done nothing the day before - it just started working overnight.


Based on this experience, I concluded that the F***-up is entirely on the Yahoo side and has nothing to do with my Mac nor Apple's software. My ultimate fix has been to abandon Yahoo Mail. Prior to Christmas, I moved my mail account to another service provider who provides IMAP. Then configured my Yahoo account to forward all incoming mail to the new server (which has a new e-mail address). Since doing so, I've had zero problems. All messages sent to my old Yahoo address get immediately forwarded to the new mail server, which has been syncing to Apple Mail with no problems at all.

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User profile for user: henrysamson
henrysamson
User level: Level 1
0 points

Jan 14, 2015 3:10 AM in response to Riiich

I started having this problem yesterday. My google account works perfectly and I can send yahoo mail. But I cannot receive or delete yahoo mail. I would prefer not to take the posters suggestion and have to abandon my yahoo account and forward to my google account if I can avoid it. I have tried deleting the account and restarting my mac but that has not worked and the mail messages that are in the in box remain anyway as they are not reloaded when I add the account back in. Is there a way to force the mac mail to truly delete the yahoo account; remove all of the emails currently on my mac?

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User profile for user: D.R.C.
D.R.C. Author
User level: Level 2
189 points

Jan 14, 2015 6:34 AM in response to henrysamson

@henry,

Apple Mail stores all the messages stored in a series of folders located in ~/Library/Mail/

There you should find one folder per e-mail account (named something like IMAP-henrysamson@yahoo.com), and another folder named Mailboxes. The latter contains any local 'On My Mac' mailboxes that you've created. The messages are stored in various .mbox files. You can manually delete any/all of the messages stored on your Mac by deleting the .mbox files or containing folders. That's a fairly drastic step, and will certainly give the Mail program apoplexy.


Before going that route, you should try rebuilding and reindexing your mailboxes, as described here.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2476217/mac-os-x/how-to-fix-apple-mail-by-r ebuilding-and-reindexing-the-mailbox.html


You can completely wipe Mail of all its digital memory (messages, preferences, plists, rules, etc) by deleting the entire contents of ~/Library/Mail/. In effect, this is a Mailobotomy. The next time you launch Mail, it should recreate the needed preferences and start from scratch. I've never tried this, and you should make a backup of the /Mail folder prior to doing so.

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User profile for user: henrysamson
henrysamson
User level: Level 1
0 points

Jan 16, 2015 5:11 AM in response to Riiich

The night of the 14th all of my messages caught up and yahoo mail was working until the afternoon of the 15th. Then it broke again and is still broken as of now.


Thanks for all of the help on this matter . . . still holding out and hoping to not have to delete all of my yahoo mail and start over. I still get all of my mail on my "Yahoo Mail" android app on my phone so I won't miss anything and can use the web interface also.

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User profile for user: JB-SF
JB-SF
User level: Level 1
8 points

Jan 16, 2015 11:25 AM in response to dstonehill

Got one mail message last night (15 Jan) and then it broke again. When I looked at the web interface I had about 10 new messages including a couple of test messages I sent. Yahoo Quick Fix program said 'trouble is leaving yahoo fine' to use an old telephone company expression that its obviously your computer and not our system. They didn't say exactly that but the message was the same, it is not our problem

but when you look on their support blog. There are Yahoo systems engineers posting that they are aware of the problem and working on it.

Check here. https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20150114021156AA4PjIX

I am able to send but can't receive. My iOS devices work fine sending and receiving but the computer is hosed.

My gmail and my iCloud download fine to the machine.


It is impossible to email or talk to a human at Yahoo. I am in the process of abandoning Yahoo after 15 + years. I am fed up with their outages and on going bugs. The Yahoo account was my primary account but after this week it is relegated to becoming a spam trap.

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User profile for user: mehrvarz
mehrvarz
User level: Level 1
15 points

Jan 18, 2015 10:19 AM in response to D.R.C.

Wow, I am having the exact same issue. I am running Mavericks. I was going to update to Yosemite because I am desperate, but it does not look like that is the solution. I even created a new user on the system and simply added the Yahoo imap account to Apple Mail. No luck. I see stuff in sent items, but nothing in inbox. Mind you, this is after the application teases me by showing activity with thousands of messages coming in. Makes me wait until it finishes, then shows nothing! This is most likely a Yahoo issue.


I hope we get a solution soon.

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Apple Mail won't retrieve new mail from Yahoo IMAP

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