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Leopard Mail no longer syncing over IMAP -- Tiger Mail does

rogersmj

rogersmj

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Sep 10, 2006
2,169
36
Indianapolis, IN
I'm using Leopard's Mail on my iMac at home to access three GMail accounts via IMAP (one GMail, two Google Apps). It was working perfectly for awhile (after following the folder setup instructions found at http://5thirtyone.com/archives/862), but now it no longer syncs read/not read status. It gets all my mail, but it no longer marks things as read even when they have been.

For example, I got about 30 emails during the day today across those various accounts. I'm using Tiger's Mail at work to check those same accounts, and as I read them they are appropriately marked as read up on the GMail server, verified by logging in via the web interface. When I get home, however, all those emails are still marked as unread in Mail 3.0. I've double checked all my IMAP account settings and they're all correct. It simultaneously stopped working on all three of those accounts. Any ideas?
 
mrogers said:
I'm using Leopard's Mail on my iMac at home to access three GMail accounts via IMAP (one GMail, two Google Apps). It was working perfectly for awhile (after following the folder setup instructions found at http://5thirtyone.com/archives/862), but now it no longer syncs read/not read status. It gets all my mail, but it no longer marks things as read even when they have been.

For example, I got about 30 emails during the day today across those various accounts. I'm using Tiger's Mail at work to check those same accounts, and as I read them they are appropriately marked as read up on the GMail server, verified by logging in via the web interface. When I get home, however, all those emails are still marked as unread in Mail 3.0. I've double checked all my IMAP account settings and they're all correct. It simultaneously stopped working on all three of those accounts. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

IMAP is working fine in Leopard. My suggestions are:
Reboot &
Repair Permissions

Double check that the email accounts are set to IMAP locally and in the gmail interface
 
Roy Hobbs said:
IMAP is working fine in Leopard.
Click to expand...

Excuse me? For me it's obviously not. But thanks for the everything's-fine-you're-just-an-idiot undertones.

Roy Hobbs said:
My suggestions are:
Reboot &
Repair Permissions
Click to expand...

The machine has been rebooted a couple times since this started. I already tried repair permissions as well (that's such a voodoo suggestion anyway).

Roy Hobbs said:
Double check that the email accounts are set to IMAP locally and in the gmail interface
Click to expand...

Did you read my post at all? Check the second to last sentence again. Of COURSE they're set to IMAP, they were working as IMAP until a few days ago and that setting was the very first thing I checked when it stopped working. And since you missed that part, you must have missed the part where I explained that IMAP sync is working fine on my other computer that uses Mail 2.0 (Tiger), and that I double-checked it in the GMail interface too. So thanks for making me repeat myself. This isn't my first time around the block; I had the courtesy to perform these types of checks before coming on here to post (i.e., this isn't just a "It's not working, what do I do???" post with no info in it), so you could at least show the decency of reading what I wrote.

I would sincerely appreciate non-flippant responses from people who actually read my post, if anyone has any real ideas. Thank you very much.

EDIT: I'd like to emphasize that Mail 3.0 stopped syncing at the same time for three separate accounts, which points strongly to a problem within Mail 3.0/Leopard itself and not a server setting...not that there's any settings on GMail other than IMAP On/Off anyway.
 
While I don't have quite the same issue as you, I am finding that IMAP is a bit buggy. I have sporadic syncing issues with read flags and sometime very slow response causing timeouts.
 
The symptoms look like server side timeouts to me. If your having issue with Tiger, the problem might be on with Gmail and not Apples Mail. It is a very new offering and they could be working out the kinks.
Inconsistent experiences between users may be a result of which Gmail server is hosting your mailbox.
 
err404 said:
The symptoms look like server side timeouts to me. If your having issue with Tiger, the problem might be on with Gmail and not Apples Mail. It is a very new offering and they could be working out the kinks.
Inconsistent experiences between users may be a result of which Gmail server is hosting your mailbox.
Click to expand...

INMO, this is a gmail problem, my imap access from mail in leopard and on my iphone has been inconsistent....they must be working out some issues on their end.
 
I was actually having similar problems last night, where I was getting a port 993 timed out error. The only thing I can remember doing between when I saw it didn't work and when it started working again was checking the box that says to only use this server for outgoing mail.

I don't think, however, that that's what fixed it, rather I think I just happened to do it around the same time the GMail servers finished doing whatever it is they were doing.
 
Thanks everyone, I appreciate the insights. I did a little further testing and found that Mail 3.0 (Leopard) does mark messages as read on the server when I read them on Leopard. It simply doesn't mark them as read if I read them on my Tiger MBP or through the GMail interface. So I've narrowed it down for read flags:

Read message on Leopard Mail -> Server -> Tiger Mail (works fine)

Read message on Tiger Mail -> Server -> Leopard (does not work)

This is about the 5th day this has been happening to me.
 
One option to try: set up one of your Gmail accounts under something like Thunderbird. If it works, then Mail.app may have some issues, especially with Gmail IMAP.

One suspect, which I'm sure has been mentioned here (ie. Mike12806), is that Gmail's implementation of IMAP may not be 100% IMAP. Or they are making changes still.

Another option would be to try another email account that is IMAP-capable and test the same read flagging issues.
 
Same Problem

@mrgoers

I have the same exact issue as you.

I have found, if I restart mail.app, it does update the read flags.

You can watch this by turning on the Activity window (Option Zero).

It will update read flags on a restart, but not any other time.

I have tried everything to no avail.

I am hoping the next Leopard patch will solve the issue.

rb
 
just want to add that i've had the same problem.. i've been looking for a solution as i'm planning to switch to my gmail hosted address as my main address. so far, i've found nothing. but what rbennion says is right, if you restart Mail, all the flags sync correctly. so, until apple fixes this (10.5.2?), an occasional restart will just have to do.
 
Leopard Mail no longer syncing over IMAP

Add me to the list of confirmed users with the exact same IMAP sync issue.

Any new fixes or are we all SOL until Apple decides to address this?
 
I have the same problem 100%. The annoying thing is I have three GMAIL IMAP accounts, and only one of them gets this error?!?!
 
/bump

My account behaves the same way with Leopard 10.5.4. That is, if I read mail on the gmail web interface (or on my BlackBerry using the official gmail client) then the read status in Mail.app is not updated.

Choosing "Synchronise <Account>" also doesn't update the status.

Closing and restarting Mail.app *does* update the read status.

Clearly, Mail.app is doing something extra on startup about reconciling/synching the account that it doesn't do when synchronising a second or third time. This should be trivial for the Apple engineers to fix - either by attaching the right subroutine to the synch call or by tracking down which variable is not being reinitialised properly when it is run a second time.

All in all, the behaviour seems to point pretty clearly at it being an Apple bug. Now... how do we tell Apple about this?

Az
 
Azzz said:
My account behaves the same way with Leopard 10.5.4. That is, if I read mail on the gmail web interface (or on my BlackBerry using the official gmail client) then the read status in Mail.app is not updated.
Click to expand...

This is definitely not the same as the original issue from a few months ago. That was a complete failure of gmail over IMAP and was fixed in later updates (either on googles or Apples side).
Thats said, I sometimes have the same issue with the read flag. I can imagine that this would be very frustrating if you depend on this working right.
 
Umm, GMail and Mail.app IMAP may have had other nastier issues a few months ago, but it looks to me like the original poster of this thread was having trouble specifically with the read/unread status, which is why I posted here.

That said... I suspect my issue may have been caused by expecting it to work properly while it was in the process of synchronising 48,222 email messages!

Now everything is synchronised fully the first time (8 hours of just letting it sit there and process), it looks like it eventually picks up the right statuses for stuff in the Inbox - and "All Mail" too, although it's a lot slower to synch that folder, as you might imagine.

So, it looks like it working, both directions. Hooray! And sorry for wasting anyone's time.

And, as an aside, the Blackberry client refuses to do even the most simple of IMAP type synching, including read mail - My conclusion is that it's not IMAP compliant at all, is it?! I shall give up on it and stick to the GMail client which is much better anyway.
 
Bumpity-bump!

I'm having what seems on face value to be the same problem: IMAP Gmail account syncs messages to the iPhone and Mail 3.5, but reading messages on Gmail or on the iPhone doesn't sync the read/unread status to Mail 3.5 except upon a restart of Mail. Gmail and the iPhone seem to sync correctly, though. Also, drafts and sent messages from Mail sync correctly to everywhere else as per my settings. It's just the Read/Unread status.

Guess I'll sit tight and wait for an update from Gmail or Apple. Not a dea-lbreaker but a bit annoying.
 
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