El Capitan Mail flashing problem

exactly the same problem here... hopefully a solution comes soon

There were some big changes to Mail in El Capitan. Testing in a new User will quickly tell you if the problem is system wide or if it's your User's folder that contains the problem.

You can use the Guest User or create a new User for testing. New User will keep your settings where Guest will delete everything when you log out.

CREATE A NEW USER

Go to System Preferences --> Create a New User in Users & Groups.

Switch to the New User by logging out/in or use Fast User Switching.

Open Mail, Enter one of your account. (I would choose the one with the smallest amount of emails)

Does Mail work in the new User?

I have narrowed this down to being an issue with my smtp outgoing servers being offline. And they lost their passwords. I reentered the one I care about, and it still doesn't go online. Tried restrarting Mail, no luck. Will try a full reboot, but I doubt that is going to help. Kind of a pain that this upgrade lost my smtp passwords. but I wonder if the problem is more fundamental than just reentering them.

I just upgraded to El Capitan & haven't experienced flashing, but all my mail temporarily vanished & I was unable to send anything. According to Apple here in .au it takes Mail a while to reorganise itself with the upgrade & that has happened smoothly for me without being more than a little patient & not fooling with anything.

Rules does not seem to be working properly. This was working fine before i upgraded to El Capitan. I have filtered few mails to move to particular folder (mailbox). New mails (that were configured to be filtered) does stay in the inbox and when right click I get an option saying "Move to <folder(mailbox)> again". If I click on the option then it is moved back to the intended mailbox. Currently my inbox is a mess. Am I missing any configuration ? Any help ?

I fixed the problem this morning. I did a few small things, not sure which was most important.

1. I opened my iPad and looked at the smtp settings for the account, and quickly realized that el Capitan had totally scrambled some of these things. The server was wrong, so I typed in the correct smtp server
2. The smtp port number was wrong, so I changed that. No idea if that was important
3. and last night, I had noticed that the outgoing password field was blank, so I had filled that in

So probably the biggest issue was the wrong smtp server. It was from an old email service that I used with the same email address.

If you have a iPhone or iPad, copy those settings over to your Mac. Hope this helps others. Fingers crossed for you. Not having email really *****.

el Capitan is resetting the outgoing SMTP server when you upgrade if it is one of the common accounts when you setup (Google, Hotmail, Yahoo...).

I saw the same problem two weeks ago in the GM beta release (and reported it), installed the release GM last night, t's flashing if there anything in the Outbox that can't be sent. (i.e. outbound me.com still works fine)

I have a few domains forward all email to a single gmail account where Google's spam filters eliminate 95% of the junk. My OS X Mail retrieves the email from that account and nicely shows what email box (account) it was originally sent to. That part still works under OS X 10.11

When I send email, I use the original ISP SMTP server not Gmail's, technically Gmail could send email using your email return address, but good spam filters will notice that the email isn't coming from the same domain as the listed return email domain, and give negative spam points.

On each email account (domain), the new 10.11 Mail app retrieved email correctly, but the Sending SMTP had been reset to gmail (or Yahoo) with the wrong ports and no password. Result: flashing message window whenever the Outbox can't send a message. What an annoying interface that is, especially if you are working on another email.

You have to edit the Outgoing SMTP parameters in a separate window. Get the parameters from gmail or yahoo setup.

Mail used to allow you to change the sending server (email address) if the first attempt doesn't work. At least on my installation, I can't change that anymore - I must delete the email - OR drag it to another mailbox - until the configuration is fixed.

Seems a point release is coming soon for el Capitan, but that will only help people upgrading in the future....

JF

(Updated with instructions)

el Capitan is resetting the outgoing SMTP server when you upgrade if it is one of the common accounts when you setup (Google, Hotmail, Yahoo...).

I saw the same problem two weeks ago in the GM beta release (and reported it), installed the release GM last night, flashing if anything is in the Outbox.

I have a few domains forward all email to a single gmail account where their spam filters eliminate 95% of the junk. My OS X Mail retrieves the email from that account and nicely shows what email account it was originally sent to. That part still works under OS X 10.11

When I send email, I use the original ISP SMTP server, technically Gmail will send email using your email return list, but good spam filters will notice that the email isn't coming from the same domain as the listed return email address, and give negative spam points.

On each email account (domain), the new Mail app retrieved email correctly, but the Sending SMTP had been reset to gmail with the wrong ports and no password. Result: flashing message window whenever the Outbox can't send a message. What an annoying interface that is, especially if you are working on another email.

You have to edit the Outgoing SMTP parameters in a separate window. Get the parameters from gmail or yahoo setup, enter them in Mail -> Accounts -> Account Information - > Outgoing Mail Server (drop down menu) -> Edit SMPT Server List -> find the service parameters that need changing ** n.b. Apple resets to SSL because that is gmail, that may not be your server.

Mail used to allow you to change the sending server (email address) if the first attempt doesn't work. At least on my installation, I can't change that anymore - I must delete the email - OR drag it to another mailbox - until the configuration is fixed.

Seems a point release is coming soon for el Capitan, but that will only help people upgrading in the future....

JF

After talking to Apple Care I can confirm that this is SMTP related and the El Capitan indeed automagically screws your Gmail settings.

After some fiddling around with the SMTP we (the AC-representative and I) descide to deleted my whole Gmail-account (since it was IMAP anyway)

I reconfigured it using the OTHER option, not the Gmail-option and the problem was resolved.

This is definitely a bug Apple has to address.

As stated before by others this was a bug also in previous beta released and I filed two reports using feedback assistant.

So I hope they'll fix it.

Hope this helps,

Arjan

The problem seems to be widespread across mail servers and clients. Mac Mail, Thunderbird and Outlook are having the same problem. IMAP accounts for some providers do not connect. So far I have the problem with Gmail, Yahoo mail and even Apple's own iCloud. In addition, Mail is now messing up settings and I have to manually reconfigure passwords and server settings and names every time Mail crashes. El Capitan has seriously messed up email productivity. If you can, do not upgrade or return to Yosemite until Apple for once is serious and fixes it's bugs.

Just checking in again to say that the fixes I made (see previous post) have "stuck" and I have not had any more problems. And judging by the very small percentage of posts about this problem to the Apple discussions board, this clearly seems to be something that afflicts only a tiny percentage of upgraders.

that said, the extensive beta testing that was done with El Capitan was supposed to catch these problems before the GM. I wonder what happened that allows a few of us to pull out our hair.

I'm having the same problem. In my case, I can't even work in the Preferences section to fix the SMTP servers, because the window keeps flashing on and off, alternating with my unsendable email message. This is not working!

A little painful, but ignoring the flashing, open the Outbox, click and hold the offending email, flashing continues, drag email to another mailbox (you can retrieve it later), flashing continues, when you see the second mailbox highlight hold for a second and after the next flash, release.

As soon as there is no email in the Outbox it stops flashing.

Might as well fix the parameters in the Advanced Mail settings. Even if Apple fixes it in some el Capitan point release, your mailbox won't be able to retrieve the old parameters.

Possibility? Someone can figure out where in a TimeMachine Backup those parameters are stored, probably ~/Library/Mail/V3/ and retrieve them... but its not that hard to reset, once the flashing stops.