Mail - mailbox not receiving mail.

[Miqs]

I have a mailbox that is not receiving mail today although it was ok yesterday. I can send emails but not receive into this mailbox. It has an exclamation mark inside a triangle indicating a problem. In the past whenever this has happened I have deleted the mailbox and re installed by filling in the info as new but when this is done you lose all the emails on the computer for this account which obviously I don't want to happen. Any ideas please?

 

[powers74]

No idea

But now I'm getting this:



Internet is working fine (I'm posting this message)... WTF

 

[Pharmscott]

You don't have to delete the mailbox. You probably just have a setting wrong such as the incoming mail server. What type of mail account is it? What settings are you using?

 

[Miqs]

Because of security issues I ultimately had to set up a new account with a new password to enable this both on the server and on my Mac. Which meant unfortunately I lost all my old emails to this account. What I now learn is that if you set up an IMAP account instead of a POP account the mailbox automatically sets up archive mailboxes in the "on my mac" section e.g. "bulk mail, draft, sent and trash", that act as depositories of emails you might want to keep. That is obviously what I should have done first before deleting the account then all my old emails would have been saved locally. Also interestingly once you move any emails from the IMAP mailboxes to the "on my mac" mailboxes the emails are deleted on the server which happens automatically if the account is a POP account. This is because IMAP account emails are not deleted on the server unless instructed to do so by accessing the server via a web account and deleting. I hope this helps anyone with the same problem as I had and which you learn from.

 

[Pharmscott]

You could have also exported the emails before deleting the account. Then import them to the new account. Also, for most POP accounts, you can tell the server to not delete things even if the client (your mac or iPhone etc.) says to delete them.

Sorry you lost your stuff.