Troubleshooting Email Problems in Apple Mail for OSX
What to do when Apple Mail seemingly stops working for no apparent reason? In this article we cover a quick array of possible problem areas, from network issues, mailbox corruption and even settings, help you to track down and debug the potential problems with crashing, slowness and connectivity that you might encounter with your Mac and email.
Connection Problems
Not to state the obvious, but the starting place would be to check to see if you haven’t lost temporary internet connection. Wireless could drop, or even your internet cnnection itself could go awry. Assuming you have full web connectivity, that you can surf the web without problems and that other mailboxes are working fine, then its time to start looking under the hood. If you have multiple email inboxes on different servers coming to the same inbox, and none work, then chances are that the connection is playing up,
Is Your Mailbox Offline?
If your mailbox becomes inaccessible for whatever reason, then it is possible that it will go “offline” this is highlighted by the “lightning bolt circle” to the right of the index. Once you have established that the internet is working fine, then I would suggest taking the account online again by clicking on the “lightning bolt” and responding accordingly to the resulting dialog box. If you get mail again and the mail box remains unavailable the inbox will go “offline” again and you need to start looking elsewhere.
The Activity Window and Connection Doctor
A way to tell what is going on in Apple Mail and in your email inbox is to open the Activity Window, either from the Window drop menu or using the keyboard shortcut Apple Key + 0, that being said any activity you see might fly by. An alternative to this is to open the Connection Doctor, also from the Window drop menu. The connection doctor is designed to highlight where things are working and not working, and where not, to provide the viewer with possible errors reported either by Apple Mail or by the connecting email server.
Check On The Server Using Webmail
If you think that everything is absolutely fine in Apple Mail and that there are problems on the web server, I would suggest going online using your webmail client, and check the actual contents of your email inbox on the server. If you do not have web mail access, or unaware of the details, I would suggest speaking to your email provider about the details of it. Once logged in, assuming everything is fine with your email there.
Other Possible Connection-related Email Problems
Able to Receive Email But Unable to Send
If you are able to recieve but unable to send emails, then it is possible that the provider of the connection you are currently using has blocked the standard means of communication – SMTP port 25 – used to relay emails out of their network. I personally get around this by running a secondary email service on a non standard port, so it might be worth asking your provider if they have such a thing, otherwise, if you are on business, consider either, switching to webmail temporarily, or turning your email inbox into an IMAP account.
Emails Are Being Duplicated
Sometimes, if you are running IMAP, and the internet connection is exceedinly slow, you might see behaviour whereby Apple Mail is downloading multiple copies of the same email. This is not a problem with Mail itself but more due to the slowness of the net connection and the ability of Apple Mail to thus sync properly with the IMAP server.
Crashing and General Slowness
Rebuild Mailbox Index
To fix slowness, possible discrepancies in the mailbox index and that on the server, plus possible crashing, it would be worth considering a rebuild of the inbox email index. I would suggest a back of of your emails before doing this, incase anything goes wrong, but as yet I have never rebuilt an inbox and encountered any problems. That being said, it is always better to be safe than sorry. If your inbox is slow and you have tens of thousands of emails in it, then besides just rebuilding the index, archive a bunch of the older emails to a folder “On Your Mac”. To rebuild in index, select therespective inbox and then select “Rebuild” under the mailbox drop menu.
Apple Mail Crashes On Startup
I have found int he past, though rarely, that soemtiems an emlx file will become corrupted and as a result when Mail tries to read the file it simply crashes. The only way i have found around this is to remove the files chunk at a time till the crashign stops. You will need to simply move them from /users/{USERNAME}/library/mail/ to another folder, hopefully identifying the offending file quickly.
Recovering, Converting & Importing Emails
There are a couple of applications, MBOX-to-EMLX converter and Emailchamy which are fit for this purpose and reviewed more extensively in my article: “ Importing Recovered Or Legacy Emails to Apple Mail“. These are perfect when handling a post-crash scenario.
Conclusion: Various Methods and Tools
As you can see there are a number of means by which to figure out some of the potential problems with Apple Mail, some simpler than others. If you were unable to find a solution here, might I suggest that you switch over to the Apple Discussion Forums and search or ask people the answer to your problem there, alternatively, head down to your local Apple Store and speak to a Mac Genius.
Whatever you chose to do, I wish you good luck with finding a solution to your problem.
January 10th, 2009 at 6:21 am
Hi,
I recently changed form a iMac PPC 800 MHz to aa brand new iMac 3,06 GHz.
When starting up the new computer, I was asked if i wanted to “import” my old PPC. I clicked “Yes”, and up till now, everything worked fine, internet, banking, everything. When I checked my mail, nothing. My old e-mails were not there, no concepts, nothing. The “Activity Window” nor the “Connection Dotor” could help me. All it sais was that mail was connected to the internet, and retrieving information, or BAL information, whatever that is…
Nothing happened, it just indicated that, now since 2 days…
Anny suggestions?
Thanks in adance,
Pilopew
December 21st, 2009 at 7:24 pm
I tried to send an email with a photo. I didn’t realize the photo was 17 MB; I only knew that when a notice came up saying that the server wouldn’t send anything over 14 MB, that mine was 17 MB, and that it would remain in my outbox until it could be sent. I’m not tech savvy, so I didn’t know what was about to occur.
I tried to send another photo, which I chose because it seemed to be smaller and therefore perhaps fewer MB. This time no notice came back that it couldn’t be sent. Instead, the little colored wheel kept spinning. I took that to mean that the email would be sent, but that it was taking its time to do so. So I then tried to send a third email with a photo (we had our 25th wedding anniversary, that’s what the photos were about — great celebration, by the way!).
The wheel kept spinning, and I couldn’t open anything else. So I quit email and started it up again. Same thing — spinning wheel, can’t get into anything.
So I restarted the computer. Same thing. Shut down the computer. Same thing when I restarted it. I left the computer on all night, but in the morning the wheel was still spinning. I shut down the computer and turned off the electricity, then restarted the next morning. Same thing. I unplugged the modem from the back of the computer so I wasn’t connected to the internet, tried opening email, but same thing.
I called my ISP (Earthlink), but they said, after a lot of back and forth, that they can’t fix a problem with Mac mail, and that I’d have to contact Apple. Which I am doing by this email.
How do I get back to the point where I can access my archives and older emails (yes, I can and do send and receive emails via Earthlink’s webmail service, but I can’t get to my archives)?
Thank you for any help you can give,
Tom
December 22nd, 2009 at 5:18 am
Well the sweet and the short is that you need to move your account data out of the way in the ~/Library/Mail/ folder so that Mail can start up a fresh. If you move, rather than delete, anything you don’t have to worry about losing anything. Also always worth making a copy/backup while you play around.
I am not are where you are based, but it might be worth taking the thing to an apple store or apple certified technician to lt me play around and do the trick for you.
Best, Vincent -
September 30th, 2010 at 12:17 am
A problem with Mail 4.3 – I have a new mac mini running OS10.6.4. On my gmail account there is a spinning gear which won’t go away. Can’t receive mail (only via internet) but can send. The other gmail account on this mac is OK. I rebuilt the mailbox once but the problem won’t go away.
September 30th, 2010 at 1:54 am
Mark – I take it your configs are identical, there isn’t an issue with the port numbers, or a typo in the hostname or anything? If you have 2 gmail accounts and they are set up the same they should both work. Try setting up the same account again, as a 3rd “account” and see if it makes any difference. I suppose other thoughts might be issues with the password or the SSL cert.
March 26th, 2011 at 2:06 pm
Hope this doesn’t sound silly. Clicking on a message used to automatically open the text in the lower half of the window. This no longer happens. I have to double-click the message to open a separate text window. I have not been able to find a way to revert to the default format. It’s making me crazy. Any suggestions?
March 26th, 2011 at 2:38 pm
Put your mouse over the bottom side of the window, under the list. The arrow should change to an arrow with a line pointing up. Double click and the message viewer should open again. Best, Vincent =
April 7th, 2011 at 4:05 am
My mail had been working perfectly until i synced my new iphone 4, i get intermittent service, now i get a message of
‘the POP server “mail@mylURL.co.uk” reject the password for user “alex@mylURL.co.uk”
Please re-enter your password, or cancel.
I re enter my password and the message just pops up again. so i have to cancel. Then a little while later it get a service again.
I noticed that with the activity window open i get this message when fetching new mail???
April 21st, 2011 at 11:17 am
Alex, I get just the same. I am useless at the tech stuff and this has left me baffled. At least I am not alone. Let us hope someone can help
September 9th, 2011 at 7:38 am
i just purchased an apple for the first time. email is essential and i have been hours on the phone with apple help desk and my internet carrier because i cannot send email. i must say the internet carriew has a much more sophisticated help desk. i keep getting a pop up in mail that asks for the password (i have no email password) so i used my carriers password, i then tried the system password. i reset the carriers password, downloaded firefox, checked prefeerences, checked all that i am able to access.nothing worked. being new to apple i am extremly disapointed. i have spent hours on the phone and was extrely disappointed at the lack of help and or understanding of the problem from apple. i would like to go on waith my life so either i get some help and that does not look promising or pack this thing up and send it back and reinstall my DELL. HELP!
September 10th, 2011 at 8:15 am
Gloria … I assume, because you mention Firefox, that you are trying to access webmail, rather than using something like Apple’s email software “Mail”. I find it odd that there is NO password to your email, as that s VERY insecure and like leaving your front door open, or the keys in the ignition of your bike, for someone to easily ride off into the sunset with it. If there is a perennial password issues, I would doubt check you are typing it correctly, rather than copying and pasting it. The password could of course be case sensitive. the other thing is, the outgoing mail server hostname could be wrong, and when it is trying to log in to send, the password/username will of course ALWAYS fail if the incorrect server has no record of you. Above and beyond that, it might be handing to see screenshots. But with luck you might have sorted this out by now! Best, Vincent =
October 13th, 2011 at 2:53 pm
I am having the same problem that Gloria is having, but only with my .mac account. My other email accounts that I access through Mail are fine. I have reset my password, but it still doesn’t work. I can access email through the mobile me website, though. Any ideas why this would suddenly be a problem? I’ve been a Mac user for years.
October 27th, 2011 at 6:41 am
Had exactly the same issues as Gloria until I went to Mailbox drop down menu and clicked Synchronize MobileMe… it’s been fine since. Not a clue why