Mail.app: IMAP accounts broken in El Capitan

Dear Mike,

I have the same issue with Outlook and when I tried to use apple mail it wouldn't even let me set up the accounts! Where can I find the 4. Un-check "Automatically detect and maintain account settings" in outlook? Please?

Thanks

Caroline

Had the same problem ( outgoing SMPT server inactive ) and an unlikely solution did the trick - whilst on the phone to Apple support verifying that passwords / account details etc were correct I noticed 150 unopened emails in the bulk folder - left hand column of email page down the bottom - I deleted these unwanted emails and the next thing i know is a dialogue box comes up 'do you want to use Btinternet as you main server' - hit yes and now all is working fine - maybe this will work for others?

I too had exactly the same problem after upgrading, so decided to use Time Machine and revert to Yosemite. Total waste of around 17hours in updating and reverting with Time Machine (thank god for this).

C'mon Apple, listen to your customers and sort this situation out - no-one is going to upgrade if they have any sense. I consider myself quite tech savvy and it will be an awful situation for those that aren't. Reason I have left a comment? - is so that Apple can see the problem has not gone away and something needs to be done about this.

Having the same problem. POP / Imap accounts have essentially gone dead. I've tried the solutions mentioned on this thread, all to no avail. So frustrating.

I had it GMail ok in Mac Mail on my IMac after upgrading to El Capitan but could not get it to work on my new MacBook Pro. Etither it wouldn't add the account at all, or I could not send or receive.

After trying a lot of things suggested in these threads I finally got it going this morning in Mac Mail, after getting it going in Thunderbird (and that wasn't easy either!).

Maybe a fluke but for what it's worth (and I'm no Mac techy)

:

I did the recommended "allow less secure apps" setting in GMail . Had some issues getting Thunderbird to accept my password/login but finally got in when I changed the settings from 2 step verification (that I don't have) to password only... That also seems to be the IMAP default for GMail in Macc Mail too-password.

Once my GMail worked in Thunderbird I tried the simple "add Google' option in Mac Mail and voila, it's there and it's working perfectly... that's in IMAP, my preference for GMail. I then uninstalled Thunderbird.

I also turned OFF the "Allow Insecure Apps" option in GMail and it is working fine in Mac Mail.

I think I may have even turned it off after I got it working in Thunderbird today, and before getting in finally going in Mac Mail.

Maybe Google just needed it to get going on one secondary program on this particular OSX system to "ok" it???

Good luck!

I was having this same issue setting up a new iMac with el Capitan and every time I tried to add another IMAP email account it would not verify. I fixed it by turning off the internet connection to the computer bypassing the verification step and continued with setting up the account with incoming and outgoing servers etc...Turned the internet connection back on and it worked just fine! There was a delay of the software activating the outgoing server but in 5 or so minutes it was online and active.

It should be noted that I did go through and verify the account through its webmail access to make sure the user name and password were correct. I also verified the email account through Mac at https://www.apple.com/support/mail-settings-lookup/ This gave me the confidence that the my input information was correct at the least.

Automatically detect and maintain accounts settings is greyed out - I cannot un-check the box! (it is checked already)

Other setting that indicate being selectable are greyed out as well.

I'm wondering if using an alternative app might be best for me. Any suggestions? I hate to leave the "ecosystem" but I'm wasting tons of time with this.

Oh my god, thank you, saved my day. I can't believe Apple is leaving Mail in this crappy state. What are they thinking?

None of the solutions above worked for me, but this did:

- Delete Account from Settings / Internet Accounts

- It asked if I wanted to delete the account on just this machine, or via iCloud - I selected deleting the account on all my machines

- Add account

- Choose Google

- Enter email and password

Deleting and recreating the account on this machine only didn't work; I had to accept the option to delete it on all of them.

Hi Mike,

My problem came when I needed to reset a password on an exosting Gmail a/c and now Applemail will not login in and I cant find anyway to re-enter my password.

I saw Wintapers suggestion but I can't access the features in the Advanced screen which Wintaper says to 'unclick' - the relevant boxes are greyed - out.

Phil

thank you this helped

thanks a bunch. this solved the issue.

Thanks for the tip! Changing the user name to just "name" vs "name@domain.com" for the SMTP server worked for me. The most obvious symptom was that no email had been received since whatever it was happened, but it was the *outgoing* user name that had to be changed. (I don't think it had anything to do with it, but I did change the "Full Name" field from the user's full name to just their login name as part of all that I was trying. Changing it back to her correct full name didn't cause the problem to recur, so I'm guessing that it was just the SMTP user name that was the problem.)

The utterly bizarre thing was that the previous setup had been working OK for a number of days, and then suddenly, from one morning to the next afternoon, the computer was endlessly prompting for the password. It was working fine in the morning of March 31, 2016 US EDT, but as of the afternoon of April 1, it was constantly asking for the password. (Mentioning dates JIC someone can correlate this with a silent update of some sort that Apple might have done.) As far as we could tell, there hadn't been any automatic update installed overnight; although the machine was rebooted in the late afternoon of the 31st. (So maybe a previously-downloaded update got loaded then? The last update the App Store app shows as having been installed was iTunes 12.3.3, on March 25, which doesn't seem like it could have been related. Before that, the last update was Security Update 2016-001 for OS X version 10.9.5, just before the upgrade to El Cap.)

I also had to uncheck the box under Preferences/Accounts/Advanced that said "Automatically detect and maintain account settings" because it kept changing the port number to (a number I don't remember right now) from the needed 993. (Needed for our particular email provider LuxSci, that is.)

***? This is bizarre; how could it have been working just fine with all the settings as they were, then suddenly require that the SMTP user name be changed, from one day to the next?

For those using Gmail accounts in El Capitan, if you find that the account is working yet disconnects often, you may find that the option to deselect "Automatically detect and maintain account settings" is unavailable (greyed out). If this is the case do the following: Go to preferences, Internet Accounts, and remove the Gmail account from internet accounts. Open Safari and log into your Gmail account, go My Account and find the "Access for less secure apps" section, set the setting for "Allow Access from less secure Apps" to "ON". Open the Mail app, go to preferences, and Accounts, add a new account but DO NOT select "Gmail" as the account type (this will add it back in as an internet account...which you don't want). Select "Other" as the account type, enter your gmail credentials and it should now add the account in and you will have the ability to deselect "Automatically detect and maintain account settings" in the advanced section.

Good Luck.

... Solution

For Hotmail account (my problem) the solution for me was to add an outlook.com alias on my microsoft account.

ex:

olduser@hotmail.com (principal Alias)

olduser@outlook.com (created Alias)

Then maintaining my old address i switched the principal alias to the outlook alias and apply changes.

back on apple mail app, you can add account, add mail account, enter your outlook account, and that's it.

... The problem

On El Capitan my hotmail account suddenly stops working with message "can`t verify password or account