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imap gmail + mail.app + USELESS!

W

whyrichard

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Aug 15, 2002
1,718
9
I am a very frustrated gmail user.

switched to imap and now mail is so slow it is useless. that is at it's best. at it's worst, which is the rule and not the exception, i get the spinning wheel of death 90% of the time.

this is ridiculous.


what am i missing?! i've set it up as properly as possible! are some gmail imap accounts simply wonky?! many seem just fine!


thanks,
r.
 
My Gmail account using IMAP is working just fine and actually is working faster since leopard.

I have noticed that the gmail servers suddenly go offline for anything up to 10 minutes or more at times and seem a tad slow when they first come back online.

If you have more than just a gmail account setup in mail.app try moving the gmail account to the top of the list this also seems to help some people.

:)
 
i am making no progress.

i open mail, and one of my mailboxes (one label mailbox in gmail) just begins to ge the clock icon (access the server) and the mail app gets the colored spinning wheel of death.

i force quit, restart the app...

i just can't do a thing.. move a message... check a mailbox... without he app getting the colored wheel!

PLEASE HELP!

should i just trash everything and restart? i FINALLY downloaded all my emails.. after three days!
r.
 
Have you tried it without the Gmail account? It sounds more like a Mail issue than the imap account to me.

Try deleting the account and then adding it again. Must be worth a shot. :)
 
whyrichard said:
i am making no progress.

i open mail, and one of my mailboxes (one label mailbox in gmail) just begins to ge the clock icon (access the server) and the mail app gets the colored spinning wheel of death.

i force quit, restart the app...

i just can't do a thing.. move a message... check a mailbox... without he app getting the colored wheel!

PLEASE HELP!

should i just trash everything and restart? i FINALLY downloaded all my emails.. after three days!
r.
Click to expand...

I noticed the other day that, for some reason, the Mail.app in Tiger works faster with Gmail than Mail.app works in Leopard. I've had a lot of issues with Mail on Leopard... maybe caused by the crappy and buggy RSS reader. Which OS are you running?

But it is true... Gmail servers go down a lot.
 
i am still on 10.4.11. tiger right? cat names geting confusing. 11.1 should be standard poodle.

r.
 
Is gmail still downloading all the mail from your gmail account? While that process was going on, my IMAP/gmail/.mail was basically useless, but since then, it's been great. If you have tens of thousands of messages in gmail, it could take a loooong time.
 
QCassidy352 said:
Is gmail still downloading all the mail from your gmail account? While that process was going on, my IMAP/gmail/.mail was basically useless, but since then, it's been great. If you have tens of thousands of messages in gmail, it could take a loooong time.
Click to expand...


-ohmygod.. it's been like... 3 days.... and it's still not done?

i thought it was done... it said something like 'syncing 5300 of 5340 messages' and then i do not see that progress bar any longer in mail's activity viewer...

... but now i see
... and it's barely moving........

Picture 4.png

... but t hen i forcequit (because the progress bar was not moving at all), restart the app... and that progress bar never shows up. i manually checkmy gmail imap account's inbox and sent mail, and all my mail is there.... so i should be done downloading my mail from imap gmail right?

r.


if it is a problem with my mail.app... what should i begin doing?
 
not sure if mail is done with the process...but it might be interesting for you to check out preferences -> accounts -> advanced...you can specify here if mail should download the complete email with attachments or just the headers.
 
I had some of the same issues with Leopard Mail and Gmail IMAP. I had tons of messages stored locally in Mail from a previous account, and a ton of messages on the gmail server. When I first activated IMAP, Gmail and Mail seemed to be attempting to synchronize those thousands of messages. It appeared to do it in chunks, sometimes very slowly, sometimes very fast. Sometimes Mail would indicate it was doing a transfer, sometimes it would not, but would still be hopelessly non-responsive, showing the beach-ball often. I went through several restart attempts until I realized what was happening, and I just let the thing sit overnight to do its thing. When it finally finished, everything seems to become responsive again, and all is well.
 
I have found the Syncronzing has always cause trouble with GMail and I stopped using it.

I have two IMAP accounts running in Mail.app and both work fine.

Try rebuilding the mail boxes as this can also help and should clear out any issues and help smooth receiving and sending mail again.

Also try checking the HD for errors via disk utility and if any are found repair via the Install DVD these can cause strange issues with different apps. Also do a permissions check something may be wonky.
 
never mind. just realized what rebuild does.

great.

it took three days to download my mail.

r.
 
whyrichard said:
I am a very frustrated gmail user.

switched to imap and now mail is so slow it is useless. that is at it's best. at it's worst, which is the rule and not the exception, i get the spinning wheel of death 90% of the time.

this is ridiculous.


what am i missing?! i've set it up as properly as possible! are some gmail imap accounts simply wonky?! many seem just fine!


thanks,
r.
Click to expand...


Gmail IMAP was also very slow for me with Mail.app and my iPhone. I switched back to .Mac email and everything is perfect again.
 
I have a relevant question.

I use Gmail with my T-Mobile Dash running WM6. Right now the gmail is set up for POP because I haven't gotten IMAP to work properly. I really want to use the Mail app because it is a slick application but it seems that if my Mail app is open I will not get my emails on my Dash if I am away from my computer.

Anyone have any suggestions?
 
wow.

my web gmail doesn't even work right now.

i can't believe that google seems to be stumbling here. seems like there isn't too much of a shortage of people who've had problems with imap here...

r.
 
evanrousso said:
I have a relevant question.

I use Gmail with my T-Mobile Dash running WM6. Right now the gmail is set up for POP because I haven't gotten IMAP to work properly. I really want to use the Mail app because it is a slick application but it seems that if my Mail app is open I will not get my emails on my Dash if I am away from my computer.

Anyone have any suggestions?
Click to expand...

isn't this question completely irrelivent to the topic?

Excuse me, I am frustrated much by disfunctionsl IMAP gmail.
 
This happened to me when I first started using IMAP with Gmail. I decided that I had all the mail that I wanted to keep in Mail.app anyway so I went into gmail and trashed everything I had. Felt good to do some spring cleaning. Now it's easily as fast as POP3.
 
I am completely at a loss. I have no mail.app use any longer. gmail imap has made my mail.app useless. it's always synchronizing, even after days.


-Should i return my mail to POP and forget about imap? (or return to my aol imap forwarding process)

-should i return my mail to pop, set up a throw away gmail account set up as imap, and forward my mail to to that light imap account until gmail gets it's act together?

-should i sit and wait and use online gmail till this server upset subsides?

-is this even a server upset?!


r.
 
in gmail's settings, imap/pop... i take it that you only have active imap, not imap and pop...

r.
 
Took mine a couple weeks

My gmail was unbearable for the first week or two, but now seems to have sorted itself out. I was hoping to set-up an extra gmail account online for a second storage archive but have it on hold because I have a feeling it will bring back my old issues.

Actually I take it back, my gmail is still screwed up. It always says it is receiving 3/4 messages but I can tell there is no network activity. Now it is receiving 7/9 messages with no network activity. So let me know if anyone figures it out.

Is there any point to gmail IMAP if you archive a copy on the gmail server and use POP or forward a copy to working email account like .Mac?
 
Crap

IMAP mail is supposed to be the better than sliced bread, unfortunately, it is a pain.

Skip it and just use POP if you use a mail client.

If you don't use a client, then use your webmail login.

Done.
 
I'm having the same slowness and non-responsiveness issue with Mail.app 3.1 under Leopard and Gmail IMAP.

And it is certainly a Mail.app issue. Gmail IMAP loads quickly and reliably under Thunderbird for OS X. Mail.app is the problem

Now, the question is, how, if possible, can this be fixed? Both are configured to use the same ports and hosts for getting my email, and both have the same SSL settings.

I think this may just be another bug in Mail.app, and actually a friend of mine who works for a big computer company named after a fruit, told me that internal users working with a certain home spun mail application did have quite a few issues. So, this doesn't surprise me, but does make me want to switch back to Thunderbird.
 
supz said:
And it is certainly a Mail.app issue. Gmail IMAP loads quickly and reliably under Thunderbird for OS X. Mail.app is the problem
Click to expand...

THAT is useful information.

i think i will be moving *temporarily to thunderbird till i hear this is fixed.

how do thunderbird and mail.app compare?



thanks,
r.
 
Prior to Leopard, I would say that Mail.app and Thunderbird were about even in terms of features, though Thunderbird did and still has WAY more tweaks and settings you can change to suit the needs of those interested in tweaks and knobs, like myself. Additionally, Thunderbird was/is very stable and fast compared to Mail.app 2.x.

The reason I recently switched over to Mail.app 3.x was due to the new set of features under Leopard, that Thunderbird does not have -- integration with iCal, maps, events, pretty GUI. All sorts of other niceties, however if basic functionality doesn't work, the niceties don't matter much. I was using Thunderbird under windows for many years and never had trouble with it, so it is a safe bet, though the GUI isn't as pretty as Mail.

For now, I'm going back to Thunderbird until the next update for Mail, at which point I'll give it another shot.
 
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