Mail no longer connecting to receive email

Question

I recently updated my iMac at work to 10.6.6 & now have an issue with Mail.
For security, I do not store my passwords for my 2 accounts. Each day when I start Mail, I am asked for the password of each account. Now this no longer happens! The passwords have NOT been stored, but the dialogs do not appear. Connection Doctor shows that both accounts are not connecting, although it DOES show that both SMTP servers are connecting. I tried Repairing Permissions, even though I do that as part of my updating SOP. Once the repair was done, Mail did ask for both passwords, and was able to retrieve email from only 1 account. A short while later, the connection to that account was failing once again. I even tried storing the passwords for each account in the Accounts Prefs, but this did nothing.

Answer 1

Mail is doing the same thing to me. I'm on my MacBook and have been using Mail for years. Lately (last 6 months or so) it has been having problems with various going offline, always asking for the password for various accounts and so on. I did an update today for Snow Leopard (which may or may not be pertinent) and now none of the accounts (all bellsouth) will go online. I click "take accounts online" in the drop down menu and in the pop-up box, but it doesn't seem to have any impact. I've closed and reopened the program, which has helped in the past and even restarted the whole computer. Nothing. I've seen where others have had problems with similar issues with something like this and the only answer anyone gets is, "it's a Mail thing." I like Mail, love the "bounce" feature, would rather not change, but the whole point of email is actually being able to receive it.
Any thoughts or advice?
Thanks,
Susan McC
Apple since '86