Why is iCloud not downloading mail to my Mac?

Question

Level 1

18 points

Why is iCloud not downloading mail to my Mac?

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask this but I can't find a Mail forum, so thought I'd start here. Please redirect me if there is a better place for this question.

My iCloud account has been greyed out in the Mailbox > Get New Mail list for over 2 hours. I've checked online and there are a dozen or more e-mails in the inbox since 8:30 am (2 hours ago) but none of them have come into Mail. Mail tells me (in Mailbox > Online Status) that iCloud is online and Mail is set to check for mail every 1 minute but nothing has come in from iCloud all morning.

Does anyone have any idea why this is happening. This is NOT the first time - there have been days when I've not had iCloud mail for half a day, then suddenly they all come in at once. Most annoying.

(OSX 10.9.5)

Posted on Feb 20, 2015 10:38 AM

Reply

Answer 1

CroMagnum

Level 1

137 points

Feb 20, 2015 4:10 PM in response to Helen W. Lee

Did you check connection doctor to see if the connections are being made?

Not a solution, but its something to check when it all goes awry.

Reply

Answer 2

Helen W. Lee Author

Level 1

18 points

Feb 20, 2015 5:08 PM in response to CroMagnum

Thanks for the suggestion - I (obviously) didn't think of trying that. I seem to be finally getting my iCloud mail now but hopefully will be able to remember Connection Doctor if it happens again, as I'm sure it will. It's been happening for months now, off and on.

Reply

Answer 3

CroMagnum

Level 1

137 points

Mar 2, 2015 6:11 AM in response to Helen W. Lee

Must be that Mac Plus you are running (heh).

I have had some weird connection issues myself, with ALL my mail accounts going gray every great once in awhile (not just iCloud). I found that the connections were not being made (via connection doctor) despite the ethernet being recognized.

My only solution has been that I need to log out of a user & back in again, or even a whole reboot to get reluctant mail to arrive. In my case, this happened after I started using a VPN & service.

Does your computer ever get shut down, or do you keep it ticking 24/7?

Do you ever verify using Disk Utility?

If I send email across accounts as a test & it doesn’t arrive within a minute, something untoward must be up. I don’t know why this is occurring either. I tied it to my VPN & taking the machine offline when not expressly needed (network location with no connections), but that was on insufficient evidence & haven’t conclusively tied it to VPN.

I find that it does no good to check with the ISP - because its always the other guy’s fault first & foremost until you keep coming back to them. In this case, (my variant), its probably not a high likelihood that its an ISP glitch.

If a complete reload of the machine weren’t so daunting (& invariably I have a pressing need for computer during such an event) - that would be my next endeavor, after a full backup.

fwiw: in my view of my version of this condition - I’ve tried resetting routers, to see if its maybe the ISP. It doesn’t fix the mail block. However, a computer reboot DOES.

Reply