Mail not working with El Capitan

Mike B Wrote:

I wouldn't advise this as a fix to anyone, if you have archived emails and organised everything in folders you will loose everything if you follow this advice!

not entirely true

since i was using iCloud all of that was backed up on iCloud including all my folders the only thing i lost where my rules since they never where fully synced

so i re-created those easy.. and my folders and mail came back easy after the fix did not loose a thing. Same goes for my gmail mail, all it's mail boxes came back as a 2nd copy is hosted on gmail servers. Same goes with exchange or any other pop server all that mail should be hosted on a server and easily recoverable on your computer as long you never deleted your mail on the server...

Mike B Wrote:

I wouldn't advise this as a fix to anyone, if you have archived emails and organised everything in folders you will loose everything if you follow this advice!

not entirely true

since i was using iCloud all of that was backed up on iCloud including all my folders the only thing i lost where my rules since they never where fully synced

Well then that should really be made clear to people at the start!

I know and many others know that backing up is an important thing to do before undertaking such things but it still needs to be mentioned before hand, many will think that if it is not mentioned, it doesn't need to be done.... it does or they will loose everything!

hrmm, a DNS issue is interesting - maybe that is what is getting blocked? Also we are on comcast and I noticed that they are doing ipv6 now with both ipv4 and ipv6 entries in the DNS settings area, so maybe that is making things wonky - I went ahead and updated my network settings to configure ipv6 "link-local only" for now to see if that helps.

Also if the problem persists, I'll try adding static entries to my mailservers in /etc/hosts and see if that helps.

I experienced a lot of Mail problems after upgrading to El Capitan. A number of people suggested rebuilding mailboxes, which doesn't fix all problems but may fix some. Others suggested removing the evelope index and rebuilding the database http://c-command.com/spamsieve/help/how-can-i-rebuild-apple This is probably a good idea. It didn't fix Mail for me which sometimes gets caught in a loop of "apparently" downloading huge numbers of messages (which don't exist). I found a fix...

1. Quit mail

2. Go to web mail (access your inbox via a browser with same login as in Mail)

3. Delete one message (preferably spam)

4. Open Mail

It should be functoning normally. So far this has worked for me, but as they say, the mileage varies. Good luck.

PS It doesn't have to be web mail, it can be any access to your mail where you can actually see the inbox with messages in it. I set up mail on an older Mac (leaving messages on the server so as not to lose them) and I could see the real messages in the inbox and delete one. After doing this I restarted El Capitan Mail and it worked.

With 10.11.3 my Mac Mail froze upon startup with spinning wheel and could not open at all. One of the posts here mentioned ICloud. After opening System Preferences > ICloud I deselected Mail and my mail opened fine and is working again.

Mine has always had iCloud disabled. Found Mail to be stable one day then go berzerk the next.

read this excellent article:

http://recode.net/2016/02/03/mossberg-apples-own-apps-need-work/

I have an update in my "fix" -- I found mails with lots of large images jamming the inbox, causing problems. I could delete the offender with webmail and instantly the mails started to come down normally.

It is difficult to modify the settings if the application crashes immediately after opening. This is very inconvenient.

Thank you! I have had this issue ever since the upgrade to El Capitan 10.11.3 on my mid 2010 iMac and my mid 2011 MacBook Pro... turning off the 'automatically detect and maintain settings' IMMEDIATELY alleviated the 'unable to connect' and 'server communication' issues I've been having for weeks and all my missing main came flooding in! Thank you Rynski, seriously I appreciate it!

I had been pulling my hair out the past 3 hours trying to fix this! What was weird was email stopped working on 2 computers, but not one 1. Whipping my keychain clean did the trick for both computers! THANKS!!!

My issue appears to be different from other folks... I can open Mail and send emails but I cannot reply to 99% of them without having Mail freeze. What happens when I hit either reply or reply to all is this: a new window comes up and Mail freezes, so that I have to force-quit and restart. When I do that, the original thread I was working from comes back up with boxes surrounding each part of the conversation and, if I attempt to reply to that, there we go again.

At this point I am unable to conduct business as usual in Mail - AND IT'S BEEN LIKE THIS SINCE 7 JANUARY 2016. How long will Apple allow this to happen? I realize Mail is antiquated, in their view anyway, but come on, not everyone writes code daily. Sure would be nice if Cupertino decided to pay more attention to its paying customers.

I'm about ready to call a leech aka attorney.

Apple has been getting a lot of complaints lately that it has put its software on the back-burner in favor of hardware. Mail, iTunes and Photos are just some.

That being said, although my Mail has now seemed to calm down, it does go wonky on occasion, with deleted mail showing back up in read mail, odd reply and text threading issues, a little bit like you have.

Bottom line is that we should either live with it, or go to a more robust third party mail program. Thankfully we do have alternatives.
Only wish there was one for iTunes ;-)

My problems seem to be getting worse on my iMac with the latest version of El Capitan, 10.11.3.

I get the message that it can't verify my AOL account. Sometimes the message is a lie. I can just cancel it, other times I have to delete and add the account, which is a real pain.

Now it isn't deleting messages. That is just starting today. I delete a message and a few more spring back. I'm becoming annoyed. The Mail app has got to be fixed!

I just downloaded El Capitan 10.11.3. Mail does not work as you all said. I happen to also have on my MacBook Pro Outlook:Mac2011 version 14.6.2 and it works perfectly. So, this really does appear to be two Apple software packages not getting along. I have rarely ever used Outlook on this computer, but will do so until Mail is fixed.

I could not send emails after updating to el capitan.

Found out that the Mail Server Port #s were changed, changed them to the original port #'s.

Works great now.