Proposed solution to ongoing, indefinite, iCloud mail outage

Temporary solution as follows:
https://accounts.google.com/NewAccount
Using google drive is an effective, reliable, means of syncing docs across all devices (not just iWork). Drive app is available on App Store for iOS.

acplaird wrote:
Icloud Mail appears to have been down here in France for the past 3 hours however the Status page continues to show that all iCloud services are operating as normal. It would be really helpful if the status page was more accurate (or should that be more honest?). As it is it I have wasted the past 3 hours checking all confidurationas I control. If iCloud were a free service lack of candour re outages might be tolerable but when you pay for a service
iCloud is a free service, who are you giving your money too, and for what?

Similar Messages

ICloud Mail Outage should cause minimal damage

I am among the throngs of disappointed users who finally got iCloud mail service back within the past few hours.
Just a note to everyone that outgoing email servers will typically make attempts at delivery every hour for two or three days before notifying the sender that delivery failed. Given that the outage here was less than two days in duration, everyone should receive all of their emails, albeit with a significant time delay.
If some impatient servers gave up after one day, then the sender might question the error message and resend the message.
On the whole, email loss should be minimal.
Nevertheless, iCloud service needs to be far more reliable than this for anyone to use it as their primary email account.

I have a similar issue, in that my email has been down since yesterday. None of the test emails I have sent, including one just sent, have shown up. I can sign into iCloud on the web, but it is not synchronized with any of my other devices, nor are any of them synchronized with each other.

ICloud mail outage

Been off the air without mail for 24 hours. Reported it via a scheduled call with Apple and all he could tell me was to wrap the same message in service speak and say sorry - but don't know when service will be resumed.
Frankly this is not good enough!
Not what the brand stands for. Maybe a case of migrating over to Google at this rate!

I have had an Apple since 1979 and even owned a computer school using all Apples for 20 years. Apple was always there for us. Never had a problem with Apple products. I'd blame the hackers and competetion and the sick people who are out to destroy instead of building things.
Go here for info:
http://www.apple.com/support/icloud/systemstatus/

Regarding your 9/12 iCloud mail outage

I'm in Houston and my last email was at 5:13am yesterday, 9/11/12, morning.

I have had an Apple since 1979 and even owned a computer school using all Apples for 20 years. Apple was always there for us. Never had a problem with Apple products. I'd blame the hackers and competetion and the sick people who are out to destroy instead of building things.
Go here for info:
http://www.apple.com/support/icloud/systemstatus/

HT4436 I want to Change the Full Name on my ICloud Mail Account, but I cannot Change it. Any Solution ?

Dear All,
I need to change the Full Name on my Icloud E-Mail Account, but I cannot change it, Any Solution ?
Tanguy

Go to icloud.com >> mail >> gear in the upper right >> preferences >> accounts. You can change it there. In my testing, I had to close and reopen my mail.app for it to take affect.

Yosemite - could not load internet accounts preference pane - same for icloud - mail not running

After Up-Grade to Yosemite 10.10:
Mail not working
Preferences Error Could not load Internet Accounts preference pane
Preferences Error Could not load iCloud Accounts preference pane
Had several issues when upgrading from Mountain Lion to Yosemite 10.10. Finally it seemed to work. When starting Mail, I tried to restore data from Time Machine (did a back-up under Mountain Lion immediately before up-grading to Yosemite). This ran for over 2 h when I suddenly noticed that "Mail quit unexpectedly. Since then I cannot work with Mail at all.
I read on the forum that many people have issues with Mail in Yossemite but apparently it's different from what I am experiencing, and it seems that none of the proposed solutions work for me.
I can start Mail, but I will only see the bar on top of the screen. Mail "Preferences" remains grey (= cannot click).
When choosing Mail "Accounts", System Preferences opens and then I get the "Preferences Error Could not load Internet Accounts preference pane."
I noticed then that I get a similar error when clicking "iCloud" in System Preferences: "Preferences Error Could not load iCloud Accounts preference pane."
I can open "Internet Accounts" and "iCloud" in System Preferences when I log in as a guest without any errors, but as soon as I log in with my user name, I get the same errors.
As suggested elsewhere in this forum, I removed the com.apple.mail-shared.plist in library and tried the same with com.apple.internetaccounts.plist.
I've spent hours on this and find this increasingly frustrating. I would try another new installation of Yosemite, if only I could be confident it would work this time...
Any advice how to solve this will be appreciated!

Hey Sage,
Glad you got it fixed!
I had exactly the same problems, but found this solution on another thread courtesy of Paul Pharoah which saved the trouble of another clean install and seems to have fixed everything . It appears the problem lies somewhere in the mail account settings.
"I 've had the same problem today and tried lots of the suggested solutions around, all without success until....
1. I moved all the files in ~/Library/Mail/V2 to the desktop
2. Deleted the folder
3. Deleted my two email accounts (Gmail and exchange server) using System Preferences>Internet Accounts
4. Re-started Mail. It now re-started as if for the first time and asked me to re-input my mail accounts which I did.
5. Mail up and running again."
from thread: Re: Yosemite mail crash
Cheers!

Can't set up iCloud mail aliases

I've been trying all day to set up alias emails under my iCloud account, but keep getting an error message "... can't be saved due to server error". This has been going on all day with several attempts using both a windows computer at work and an iMac at home. Anyone else getting this problem/error message?

I've had this problem for at least 2 months. I also have applecare. They moved it up the chain and the senior advisor-1 wanted access to my email account to look into it. I was hesitant but figured I'd do it for a day or two. After 4 days or so I emailed back and forth with advisor in charge asking how long they would need access because I wasn't comfortable giving them indefinite access. He said he had no idea and it would take as long as they needed. I found that unacceptable and changed my password so they couldn't get into the account anymore.
Almost three weeks later the same advisor emailed me again asking if I had changed my password because they couldn't get into my email account. So it took them 3 weeks to even begin to look into the problem??
I called another senior advisor-2 and told him my original alias problem, and the issue I had with their solution to it (unlimited access). He said that didn't sound right and that he'd look into it. He called back and told me that HIS email account was having the exact same problem and that another senior advisor would contact me. He (sr.advisor-3) did and requested access to my email account AGAIN. I called the advisor-2 who was having the same problem that I was and asked him why they couldn't experiment with his email account instead of mine. His (sr.advisor-2) reply was as lame as the proposed solution, he said because I'm the one who put the help ticket in for it. Seriously? Once again I denied them access to it.
So as of right now I still can't create any email aliases. I've only got one and it says I have 2 of 3 available. My guess is they have no idea how to fix it and are ignoring this issue.
My solution: create another gmail address. Since Apple insists that we use an outside email address for our Apple ID I have a gmail account anyway. Gmail doesn't seem to care how many email address I want so I'm sticking with them.
Has anyone found a resolution to this yet?

No access iCloud mail

Hi,
Have not had access to my ICloud mail for 12 hours now !!! Have talked to nice people att Applecare several times but they cant find any solution. 12 hours is a really long time and I feel quite disapointed. Does anyone else have any idea of any solution?

It's down for me as well, however this is one of those server-side situations where Apple just has to figure out what is going wrong and fix it. There isn't a solution per say that any of us can do but wait it out. It's annoying, but these things happen. Remember, they have a huge event tomorrow which might be contributing to this outage.

TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS RE: iCLOUD MAIL SERVER DROPOUT

Here's what I learned throughout this and I will post a discussion in a separate thread for the rest of the folk out there.
MYTHS AND FACTS RE: iCLOUD MAIL SERVER DROPOUT- WHAT I'VE LEARNED
Hopefully this troubleshooting helps everyone that has had or having issues, for now and for the future...
Firstly, the Apple system status is a bit of a myth. Because it is a global community of people using iCloud, it does not always update in real time. The Apple techs check this when there is issues, as do the public, so odds are unless every single person is having issues around the globe, then it won't reflect an issue. http://www.apple.com/au/support/systemstatus/
Apple technicians work in territories. For example, I live in Australia so I had to deal with a tech supervisor who looks after Australasia and who is based in Singapore. They don't get a notification if a group of people in Canada are having problems, even if they are identical to mine, unless as above, the whole world is having issues.
CHECK THESE FORUMS as a first step measure to work out if the problem seems to be just you and your account, or a wider community. Particularly before you make any major change to your email accounts, passwords, computers or phones.
If you get an issue in the next week or so (and keep in mind for the future) Error Message: "MY NAME" returned the error "[AUTHENTICATIONFAILED] Authentication failed." Your username/password or security settings may be incorrect. Would you like to try re-entering your password?" and this happens multiple times when you know the password is correct, then odds are that the server is down and you are best to wait it out. Try checking your mail via iCloud to test. If you can send it through there, odds are that the glitch has nothing to do with your password or issues with your account and rather than make changes, try and wait it out.
If all of your folders in your email disappear, if they are IMAP folders, then log into iCloud mail in your web browser to check that they are still there. It just means that your mail client (Mac Mail, Outlook for Mac etc) can't access the IMAP folders via the server. Don't panic until they are gone from every device you use your email on.
Be wary of deleting ANYTHING from your computer unless you are backing it up first. For example, I had a tech guy on the first day of the server drop out, who gave me the wrong advice of deleting EVERYTHING from my keychain. This resulted in me having massive security issues for web browsers and thus, I couldn't log into my iCloud mail in my browser. Not only did I have to re-install my OS Maverick to fix it (which took 10 hours) but I could have muddled through this mess by continuing to work using web mail.
If everyone seems to be having a mail server problem based on online community discussions, then you are not alone and TELL your Apple tech this. Send copies of the links to the various conversations. Push them (nicely) to investigate internally what is going on and don't let them rely on the System support status. It also helps to put in a report to Apple down the track.
Make sure that you can get a copy of Apple tech guys email address. Thankfully, even though I was on the phone to them for in excess of 7 hours over the past two days, I could update my guy via email and also send him screen shots of things that did or didn't work using my iPhone. We would keep in contact and all I would have to do is send him an email and he would call me back straight away. No holding or dealing with any call centre issues, which is probably the only reason why I didn't lose my cool too much.
If you can get into your iCloud through your web browser, you have the options under the inbox and then the little wheel thing down the bottom (preferences) to put a vacation message, like an out of office. Put that on and explain you are having email issues and give another email address or your contact number. At least the people that you need to contact will know that things could get lost in cyberspace. I wish I had of known this earlier.
You can also forward emails emails to another email address under preferences. Also very handy.
Become friends with your tech guy rather than enemies. If you don't feel like your tech guy knows what he's talking about, politely request to speak to a supervisor. I would be having a nervous breakdown right now (small business owner, lost two days of billable hours so I am financially behind) if I didn't have a good relationship with the guy that has been helping me. We are a good team, with me updating him with the information, via these forums, to find a proper solution to the issue and to rectify the wrong information I was given by the previous Apple tech guy I spoke to.
Ask them to replicate your issue on their side of the fence to troubleshoot. For example, my tech guy Levi replicated my issue with websites by intentially removing the system certificate from his computer and he realised that was what the problem was, and thus he could quickly find out how to fix it.
Back up your stuff regularly. It might be annoying but it is peace of mind if know you are only going to lose a minimum of a week's worth of stuff.
Apple has an engineering team and tech guys raise 'tickets' to them with information on what has happened to their clients. I don't know much about this but I would assume it is having the engineering team investigate to stop this happening in future. They can only work with the feedback they get I suppose. I would also suggest doing the Apple Care survey so they also get feedback. We need to explain to them that we are asking for communication first and foremost - whilst it is inconvenient, if we all knew when and where they would be doing server upgrades (which the rumours indicate that this is what happened) then I don't feel everyone would be so frustrated.
Using your computer is like raising a child - you know when something is not right, even if you are not experienced at it yet. Sure, you may not know the lingo but trust your instincts and tell your tech guy. I have learned more in the past two days about computers and Mac's than ever before and I know when I can confidentially say that strange things were happening to my Mac and where Apple went wrong in guiding me. Don't always take a blanket or easy explanation if you don't think it is right; odds are it will result in making changes to your product that do more harm than good.
Keep a record of notes of how much time you have spent on the issue (including phone calls to Apple), what they have told you to do and at what time, changes to passwords, troubleshooting tips and the contact details (and reference numbers) of who you speak to. I'm not sure if Apple provides compensation for these issues or anything along these lines, but I certainly will be informing them so they can try and better their service to me in the future.
Anyway, I hope that helps everyone a bit - these are just things that I have learned and if anyone else has any tips please feel free to add them.

Tried port 465 but it wouldn't work.
Went to our help desk and here's the reply I got (paraphrased slightly cuz the person at the help desk was trying hard to be helpful and I don't want to get him/her in trouble):
I presented this question to the university team and then waited for a long time to get the following reply:
we do not allow relay from non-university IP addresses.
port 25 for smtp is a standard worldwide.
For the most part, that went right over my head and didn’t answer anything, but I hope it means something to you.
I called him to get more clarification, but all I really got out of it was that, if you don’t use exchange which is secure via port 443, then your other option is to use smtp. And then he said something about how relay, iron ports, and authenticated accounts work together to make it secure. I know it makes me sound a lot more inept than I am, but all that made little sense to me. What I gather, is… that by selecting SSL when configuring your client, it makes it so that your login info and mail content is safe. Sorry, I can’t provide a more cohesive and comprehensive explanation, but I think the bottom line is that they have combined a non-secure protocol with other stuff to make it secure.
So, I'm hoping that checking SSL and using port 25 somehow solves the problem to the satisfaction of our IT professionals at the University ...
Again, thanks for taking the time to educate the rest of us!

IOS 7.1 update - Icloud Mail appears broken on iPad Air

Since installing the iOS7.1 update I have been unable to get icloud mail to work on my iPad Air.
Its not an iCloud problem (i don't think) because on my two macs i can access my icloud via both the web browser and email apps. I can send and receive emails on all these variants.
However, all i see on the iPad is the message "cannot get Mail. connection to server failed"
I tried all of Apples troubleshooting suggestions, and nothing worked. I have deleted the icloud account and re-installed it (twice) and all that happens now is all the previous emails have vanished from my iPad, and whenever i try to open Icloud email i get asked for my password and my Inbox remains blank....and periodically i get asked for the pssword again, and again, and again....
Weirdly, i can still send emails without problems, and a copy remains in the outbox too.
What is really p!$$!ng me off is this iPad has worked perfectly since i bought it, whilst my wifes identical device has been plagued with crashing problems since we bought them a day after launch.
Now i cannot access my email, and i'm no longer eligible for tech support...even though the ipad is just over 4 months old and this is a problem that appears to have been created by Apple.
Any suggestions?

i seem to have found a solution to the email problem!
http:http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4864?viewlocale=en_US
add a new mail account, but instead of picking the built-in iCloud option, i had to choose other and then enter the IMAP details manually.
Once that was entered, i went into the iCloud settings and switched Mail off. Then back in the email settings i renamed the account description to iCloud.
thats three hours of time i could have done without wasting!

How to use different mail address in icloud mail

Hi,
I'm facing a dilemma : switch from Gmail to iCloud
I would like to gather my cloud account and i'm quite satisfied of apple icloud, but there still is a last barrier to me :
multi-mail accounts !
I didn't find any solution in order to be able to send mails from iCloud with an alias as @gmail.com, @live.com or any other mails.
I totally can forward all my mails to my icloud address (im already doing it with Gmail) but i NEED to be able to answer my mails with the correct alias (for work as much as for private life) just as i currently do with google mail service linking my alias smtp's.
This is the last thing that makes the swap from Google to iCloud impossible for me, but maybe there is a solution ....
Thanks,

You cannot send emails via iCloud from non-iCloud email addresses. There is no solution to that using the iCloud service.
There are some convoluted workarounds that involve setting up multiple email accounts with different outgoing mail servers, but they do not allow you to send non-iCloud Mail via iCloud.

ICloud mail sync between iPhone 4S and Mac Book

I am new in the Apple world. I have a brand new Apple MacBook Pro right out of the box and an older iPhone 4S, using a Pop3 mail account (and for various reasons I do NOT want to change to IMAP, e.g. storage space issues on the server). I do not use Gmail or any other of these services, but use my own e-mail via my website provider. I download e-mails via POP3 onto various computers (but leaving e-mails on the server for a period of 4 weeks).
I can send and receive e-mails, no problem on my Mac nor my iPhone.
To sync between both (esp. with regard to sent mails) I have created an icloud account which works fine for synchronising my contacts, for example. But it does not in any way synchronise my e-mails between the devices or show any e-mails in icloud mail (in icloud or on in Mac mail) at all. The folder is there, it's just empty.
I changed over from Windows after being frustrated by performance issues (although I am starting to miss Outlook already). But in the Apple world I am already overwhelmed by the feeling that I do not have the slightest idea of how to set up things here...I am aware that I might not get the simplest basics, but I have no one to ask (since all friends are Microsofts-addicts).
I use three e-mails accounts (work and private) and now I am already stuck with getting to run one and sync it over the devices, let alone three.
Thanks for any help!
Stephanie

Apparently you must be very narrow minded. I don't want to develop an e-mail client from the scratch.
I would implement the sync the following way.
Assuming I use POP3 on both my iPhone and my MacBook. On my iPhone mail client I am downloading e-mails and reading them from time to time and replying. There is an ended set of what you actions you can do with your e-mails. Every e-mail has a unique ID / fingerprint - you can recognize it with 100% accuracy. I'm also downloading e-mails on my MacBook mac mail and performe the same ended set of actions on this e-mails. So the system architecture should be as follows:
1. MacBook mail client queues all the actions I have performed with my e-mails on my MacBook.
2. iPhone mail client does the same - creates a queues with actions I have performed on my iPhone.
3. If I have the syncing turned on on both of my devices and I'm logged in on both of them with the same Apple ID both devices process the queues to my iCloud, compare it and update status of my e-mails according to the actions in each queue.
So I will rather wait until Apple will do this simple solution.

My iCloud mail on my iMac no longer works,

My iCloud mail on my iMac no longer works, yesterday it just stopped. I go tth eiMac in mid 2007, same iCloud email account works on a mini mac i purchased last summer, solutions?

Give Apple Care a call. They had a server issue and they will need to walk you through the specific correction for your computer.

ICloud mail not syncing with Droid RAZR

On July 24th, 2012 iCloud mail stopped syncronizing with my Droid RAZR. My wife and I have identical phones, and have currently active and functional iCloud accounts on Mac. Both of our phones had functional email syncronization before AND AFTER ICS updates. No new dowloands or settings changes have occured. I have ensured that we are using the correct manual settings [email protected], PW, imap settings mail.mac.com, port 993, SSL
I have tried using imap.mail.me.com and that does not work either. I tried the p07- prefix, and that too does not work. The only error it providfes is that it cannot connect to the server, and no other information is provided.
I was on with verizon support, apple support, and motorola support and no one knows what has happened or has any solution.
Have others encountered this problem recently? I have seen postings from last year on this, but nothing recently.
If others have solutions, please post.
Thanks

I had the same problem. Took me a long time to figure out but just got it working with Motorola level 2 support. For some reason the settings changed and they are different settings that what I got to work using the K-9 app. Basically, you need to change the incoming and outgoing server settings from what they were! incoming server is imap.mail.me.com. Use port 993, ssl/tls (accept all certificates) and authentication method should be LOGIN. Outgoing settings should be smtp.mac.com with port 587, require sign-in, authentication method is PLAIN

Can't access iCloud mail or contacts from PC

I can't access my iCloud emails or contacts from my home PC (Windows 7). iCloud.com either returns an error message or else fails to respond at all.
All other sites I try are behaving normally, so it would appear to be an iCloud problem rather than anything at my end.
Here is the error message I get from iCloud:
"Mail could not be loaded
"There was a problem loading the application due to a possible network error or missing resources. Please try again.
"Details
"By clicking 'send to Apple' you agree that Apple will collect and use this information..."
I have tried this many times. I either get this error message, or else nothing at all happens. All other web sites work fine. I have no other problems with my PC in any application, so this is almost certainly a problem with iCloud. Until it is solved, iCloud is nearly useless to me, as I can only use it from one device, my iPad. On my PC, I reach iCloud by clicking on the link within the iCloud application.
I would greatly appreciate some help in dealing with this problem in accessing iCloud from my PC. (No Mac-based solutions, please: I don't have one.)

Today this worked for the first time on my PC, at last. Had just updated iCloud software to version 2.1.2 - could this have affected the operation of the web site on my computer? Seems odd. Anyway, nice that it finally works. Suggest others who have the same problem try this.

Proposed solution to ongoing, indefinite, iCloud mail outage

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