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baryon

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Oct 3, 2009
3,906
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El Capitan 10.11.3, 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro (late 2013).

I never had any issues with Mail until recently. I have the app constantly open on a separate space. 50% of the times I check it, it shows an exclamation mark in the sidebar, like this:

Screen Shot 2016-02-09 at 5.41.02 pm.png

I have a Gmail and iCloud account, and it always happens to both simultaneously so it has nothing to do with Gmail or iCloud. In fact, I can always check Gmail online and that always works. It also always works on my iPhone with the Gmail app.

When I click the exclamation mark, it just says there are connection problems. I click Connection Doctor, and there's a spinning wheel for the IMAP connections, while the SMTP connection is always fine. I don't really know what that means.

Screen Shot 2016-02-09 at 6.25.01 pm.png


Screen Shot 2016-02-09 at 6.25.07 pm.png


If I turn WiFi off and back on again on my Mac, it usually immediately fixes the issue, until it comes back again soon.

But nothing else ever has connection issues. So there's nothing seemingly ever wrong with my internet connection in general (browsing in Safari is always fine, and other internet apps are fine).

I'm not even sure if this is a problem. I seem to get all my emails just fine - I can't tell if I'm getting them delayed because of this. But it would make me feel more comfortable if it wasn't reporting errors, who knows, maybe one day I won't be able to send an important email and it won't even tell me, since Mail generally sucks at telling you when something's wrong.


Anyone else with this issue? Is there a simple way to diagnose and fix this? Should I just start using a mail client that doesn't totally suck?
 
Last edited:
El Capitan 10.11.3, 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro (late 2013).

I never had any issues with Mail until recently. I have the app constantly open on a separate space. 50% of the times I check it, it shows an exclamation mark in the sidebar, like this:

View attachment 615296

I have a Gmail and iCloud account, and it always happens to both simultaneously so it has nothing to do with Gmail or iCloud. In fact, I can always check Gmail online and that always works. It also always works on my iPhone with the Gmail app.

When I click the exclamation mark, it just says there are connection problems. I click Connection Doctor, and there's a spinning wheel for the IMAP connections, while the SMTP connection is always fine. I don't really know what that means.

View attachment 615310

View attachment 615311

If I turn WiFi off and back on again on my Mac, it usually immediately fixes the issue, until it comes back again soon.

But nothing else ever has connection issues. So there's nothing seemingly ever wrong with my internet connection in general (browsing in Safari is always fine, and other internet apps are fine).

I'm not even sure if this is a problem. I seem to get all my emails just fine - I can't tell if I'm getting them delayed because of this. But it would make me feel more comfortable if it wasn't reporting errors, who knows, maybe one day I won't be able to send an important email and it won't even tell me, since Mail generally sucks at telling you when something's wrong.


Anyone else with this issue? Is there a simple way to diagnose and fix this? Should I just start using a mail client that doesn't totally suck?


This keeps happening to me recently as well. It is super frustrating. The Mail app has randomly started crashing multiple times a day as well.
 
El Capitan 10.11.3, 15 inch Retina MacBook Pro (late 2013).

I never had any issues with Mail until recently. I have the app constantly open on a separate space. 50% of the times I check it, it shows an exclamation mark in the sidebar, like this:
[...]
Anyone else with this issue? Is there a simple way to diagnose and fix this? Should I just start using a mail client that doesn't totally suck?
Yes, I have this exact same problem with a brand new 13 inch Retina MacBook Pro, also running 10.11.3. I'm also using multiple email providers, and they all fail to to connect via IMAP many times per day. Restarting wifi also fixes the problem instantly for me.

Does anyone know a solution / workaround?
 
I have also been experiencing this issue for a while now. Never figured out what is the cause/solution. My workaround has been to reboot, which resolves it for a period of time. Running 10.11.4.
 
Yes, I have this exact same problem with a brand new 13 inch Retina MacBook Pro, also running 10.11.3. I'm also using multiple email providers, and they all fail to to connect via IMAP many times per day. Restarting wifi also fixes the problem instantly for me.

Does anyone know a solution / workaround?

I have also been experiencing this issue for a while now. Never figured out what is the cause/solution. My workaround has been to reboot, which resolves it for a period of time. Running 10.11.4.

I just read somewhere that this issue happens when you have more than one account in Mail. I had a Gmail and an iCloud account, which could be the issue. So I removed iCloud (which I've never really used), and so far it seems to work.

Apparently there is a major bug in Mail that causes it to randomly choose one server from the two accounts, and it uses that to check mail for both accounts, which will obviously not work for at least one of them about half of the time. The solution is to make sure there is only one account in Mail. It doesn't really look like Apple cares, we're on version 10.11.4 now and it's still not fixed.

Do you have more than one account? Even if you need two accounts, try to remove one temporarily to see if it fixes the issue.
 
Do you have more than one account? Even if you need two accounts, try to remove one temporarily to see if it fixes the issue.

iCloud is the only account I have set up.

Was getting frustrated with this problem, and found that switching to Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) solved it, at least for me.

I am using OpenDNS' servers instead of my ISP's - 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.
 
Was getting frustrated with this problem, and found that switching to Google's DNS servers (8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4) solved it, at least for me.

I should try that, but I have no idea what that means - how do you switch to those servers? Where do you enter those settings?
 
Using only one account in Mail did not solve the issue, the problem has returned within a day. I'm clueless. It's crazy how you buy a computer with a default mail client which can't send and receive mail. That's kind of the most important thing it's supposed to do! I mean if you buy a car and it won't start, that's a big issue, you complain and you get it sorted out. You buy a table and it doesn't hold things up, then it's a bad table. You buy a kettle and it fails to hold water, then it fails entirely as a product. You use a mail app that can't receive mail, it's a bad mail app which has no use whatsoever.

For f's sake Apple it's not that difficult! I'm getting tired of these stupid bugs, it used to work, why did it stop working? If something works, for God's sake, stop making changes to it! Be happy that it works!
 
I have this exact problem!

Happens most frequently with Gmail/Google Apps accounts, but also with Exchange accounts.

Like OP said, toggling WiFi can sort it out sometimes. Also going into System Preferences/Internet Accounts and/or iCloud can make mail.app work again. But most times I need to reboot my Mac.

It's shocking how bad the Mail.app has become. This is my work machine!
 
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