Att yahoo pop3 mail stopped downloading

Question

A few days ago my pop email from ONE of my att accounts stopped downloading onto both my imac G5 and my ibook. I still can send messages, and another att yahoo account I have will send AND receive in the same apple mail application. I also can get my .mac email in apple mail.
Can pick up the att messages for the problem account on the web email interface and on my iphone, but I don't understand why I stopped getting them on the apple mail application.
Have checked all account settings and they are correct according to att's web site and support people. Have spent an hour on the phone with att yahoo support people, and they can't fix it.
Have also tried deleting the email account and setting it up again. Have dragged the com.apple.mail.plist file out of my library and onto the desktop to mimic setting mail up from scratch again. Apple Mail's "GET INFO" function can see the messages on the server, but they won't download.
Any suggestions?
Thanks,
Casaros

Answer 1

You’re welcome, but I cannot assume anything you don’t tell us. What you had already tried is essential information that you should have provided from the very beginning...
Actually, it isn’t clear whether you tried removing from the server the particular message that Mail could be choking on or removed something else, nor whether Mail is really failing to download the messages or it’s actually downloading them but you have some rules that process them in an unexpected way...
Do the messages that Mail displays in the Account Info window, but apparently doesn’t download, appear there as already downloaded or as not downloaded yet (dot column)? If they appear as not downloaded yet, does Mail display any extraneous info for any of them, e.g. a size or a date that doesn’t make sense?
Not sure how Eudora or Thunderbird will help me here.
Well, reading what I said in the same paragraph where I suggested using another mail client would answer that, i.e. to avoid losing messages that Mail hasn’t downloaded yet as a result of removing them from the server...
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For POP accounts, Mail uses a file within the account folder to keep track of which messages have already been downloaded. You may try deleting that file so that Mail treats the messages still on the server as if new and tries to download them again:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to the ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/ account folder.
3. Locate one or two files named MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded and move them to the Trash. Mail 1.x used MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded to keep track of which messages had already been downloaded. Mail 2.x uses MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2 for the same purpose.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.