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Mac Mail corrupted?

P

Peter Franks

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jun 9, 2011
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Having problems with Mac mail receiving and sending, email coming through OK on webmail, iPhone/iPad, but on MBP 'Mail' won't receive any new mail. Is there anything can be done to fix this quickly and easily? I went on to webmail to see if anything was in there that was stuck, but nothing doing?

It's not the servers, as I've now a problem when going to 'On my Mac' folders that are talking forever to download any emails in there.which are offline mails, as I understand it. 'Rebuild' is greyed out.
 
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Are you by chance using both Ethernet and WiFi? I had the same issue and resolved it when I changed the priority of my network connections (putting WiFi ahead of Ethernet in Network properties).

It is may be best to just use WiFi (if using handoff features).
 
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techwarrior said:
Are you by chance using both Ethernet and WiFi? I had the same issue and resolved it when I changed the priority of my network connections (putting WiFi ahead of Ethernet in Network properties).

It is may be best to just use WiFi (if using handoff features).
Click to expand...

Hi. Thanks for your reply. I'm just using WiFi. It's kind of just frozen. Even after shut down and restarts.
 
Peter Franks said:
Hi. Thanks for your reply. I'm just using WiFi. It's kind of just frozen. Even after shut down and restarts.
Click to expand...
Could be the Mail app is corrupt. Couple of ideas:
  • use an alternate mail client, I switch between Mail and Spark.
  • Wait for the next OS update, it might install an updated Mail client.
  • Re-install the OS in place. Boot to recovery, and go through install but don't reformat the drive. What this will do is install the OS and included stock apps but leave settings, files, etc in place.
 
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Thanks for the advice, I will check out a new mail client in the meantime yes.
I did try Spark on iOS a long time ago.
 
I experienced the same issue of not receiving any new mail for today on a MacBook Pro, but when a friend had the exact same issue on his MBP, it was too much of a coincidence. I think something was messed up with Cox Communications' email talking to Mac Mail, as tonight it finally downloaded hundreds of emails to Mail, including today's missing emails. I suspect Cox delivered previously-stuck or non-delivered emails as part of whatever they're trying to fix on their side, potentially a security/certificate issue. It's odd that today's emails were available through Cox webmail and non-Cox vendors, but not through Mac Mail for the whole day until tonight.
 
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In the past I've had issues on one Mac or another with Mail not working with one of my accounts. Since my accounts are Exchange and IMAP, and I don't have any "On My Mac" folders, my solution was to turn Mail "OFF" for the two accounts, delete everything in the ~/Library/Mail folder and then turn Mail back on for the two accounts and let everything reload.

If I did have "On My Mac" folders I would have exported the mail in those folders first and import it back last.
 
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My first thought was totally the hosting company, as it wouldn't be the first time, but the fact iPhone/iPad worked told me that they weren't at fault, for once! Plus the fact the 'On my Mac' emails had all disappeared, and it took forever for them to load, it showed empty folders, which makes no sense to me, unless they're IMAP related, which they're not, so why aren't they just in there when I open them? When there are problems and folder is empty, but they all reload from server, as if IMAP, but they're actually offline emails, it's a definite Mac fault. No idea why
 
Peter Franks said:
My first thought was totally the hosting company, as it wouldn't be the first time, but the fact iPhone/iPad worked told me that they weren't at fault, for once! Plus the fact the 'On my Mac' emails had all disappeared, and it took forever for them to load, it showed empty folders, which makes no sense to me, unless they're IMAP related, which they're not, so why aren't they just in there when I open them? When there are problems and folder is empty, but they all reload from server, as if IMAP, but they're actually offline emails, it's a definite Mac fault. No idea why
Click to expand...

Just lol at this way:

POP email: the email server just delivers the emails and dosn’t store them
IMAP email: the sever keeps a messsage for certain amount of time (30 days usually) even if the user gets a copy!
 
Peter Franks --

Do you use POP or IMAP?
Does your ISP or your email provider "go through" Yahoo (i.e., use their servers) at all?
 
You don't mention who your email provider is, but it may be worth reaching out to their tech support. They may have made a change that affected the way that your mac was setup to access their mail. Maybe you need to do a password reset, or connect to a different port number. They may have made a change that your IOS mail clients picked up automatically, but require a manually made change on you Mac's mail client.
 
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techwarrior said:
Could be the Mail app is corrupt. Couple of ideas:
  • use an alternate mail client, I switch between Mail and Spark.
  • Wait for the next OS update, it might install an updated Mail client.
  • Re-install the OS in place. Boot to recovery, and go through install but don't reformat the drive. What this will do is install the OS and included stock apps but leave settings, files, etc in place.
Click to expand...

I would have also added, try creating another user account. ( :apple: >> System Preferences >> Users & Groups)

Some Mac files could be corrupted, or deleted files which have issues with Mac mail.

You think you delete some system files totally unrelated to Mail, but then find is affects mail somehow...

Creating new profile, would prove this.
 
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Thank you people. I had to uninstall and reinstall. That was the only way of getting this back to normality. Have lost a lot of offline stuff but price I had to pay. I think TM has it backed up, but I’ve no clue of getting it back on without overwriting stuff I don’t want to. Is there a way of just getting back offline folders into Mail from TM? Thanks again for all your very helpful replies.
 
Peter Franks said:
Thank you people. I had to uninstall and reinstall. That was the only way of getting this back to normality. Have lost a lot of offline stuff but price I had to pay. I think TM has it backed up, but I’ve no clue of getting it back on without overwriting stuff I don’t want to. Is there a way of just getting back offline folders into Mail from TM? Thanks again for all your very helpful replies.
Click to expand...
The On My Mac mailboxes are stored as mbox at "~/Library/Mail/V6/
 
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