Why does it take so long to add email accounts?

[Nermal]

I've been meaning to ask this for ages now, but finally ran into the problem again...

In Mail, when you add an account, why does it take so ridiculously long to verify with no way to skip verification? At first I thought this was just my system but I've now had a friend ask me why it's so slow (took 17 minutes) and he's on a different ISP and everything.

This means that 100% of the computers I've seen take an unacceptably long time to verify the account. This problem only appears to affect Apple Mail. I find it hard to believe that Apple could release something this bad, so I have two questions:

1. Is this normal?
2. Why does it happen?

Thanks.

 

[vandozza]

I honestly havn't seen this problem (I have 3xIMAP email accounts.)

You don't mean when adding the account using the "add account wizard" thing do you?

I find that method pretty cumbersome.

If you option-click the "+" button to add a new account, you can bypass having to use Mail's "add account wizard" (Mail just creates a new blank account for you, where you can fill in the details without using the wizard.)


EDIT - and what exactly do you mean by "verification?" It's not simply Mail downloading/synchronising with the server is it? Cause that would be normal, and take longer the bigger the mailbox is.

 

[Nermal]

I wasn't aware that you could skip the wizard (is it really that hard to add a Skip button?) but yeah, that's where the verification occurs.

The actual message is "Checking connection to mail server 'server'..."

I just tried skipping the wizard and all is well, it didn't try to check the account first so the process was nice and quick so thanks for that

 

[vandozza]

I believe I read this hint on www.macosxhints.com, and you have been able to do this in Mail since the OSX Tiger era, credit to whoever found this hard to find feature!

 

[Mal]

For a lot of services, that step doesn't take long at all. The only one I've noticed taking a long time is Earthlink, and you can hit escape after the first part to save a little bit of time, but it is annoying.

I wonder if anyone can help us figure out what's different about the ones that do take a long time and those that go nearly instantly.

jW

 

[lostngone]

If I had to guess I would say it has to do with the Mail App trying to figure out on its own if the server uses things like SSL, TLS, Certificates, etc for IMAP/POP and SMTP.

It is nice that the it does it all for you but I agree can take a long time.

 

[JediMeister]

To bypass verification, assuming you are 100% certain the incoming/outgoing server info is right, you can hold down the option key as you're going through the wizard; you can quite easily get to the summary pane in about a minute if you have all the information to input at your fingertips.

 

[Solomon Oppenheimer]

To bypass verification, assuming you are 100% certain the incoming/outgoing server info is right, you can hold down the option key as you're going through the wizard;

13,5 years later, that doesn't seem to work any more

Still wondering what Mail does while the wheel is spinning, just for checking user/pass/cert on a simple POP3 server?