Won't retrieve new mail

I am running Mail.app 3.6 on OS X 10.5.8. I have three IMAP mail accounts set up.
Last night, Mail.app stopped pulling in new mail. You can click the Get Mail button, it goes and looks (it all looks normal in the Activity Window), and returns with no new mail. Yet if I quit Mail.app and check with any other client (webmail, Alpine, iPhone via IMAP), I see lots of new mail.
My laptop had been up for a few days, so I closed mail (had to force-quit) and rebooted. No luck. I also repaired all permissions. I have tried deleting one of my INBOX.imapmbox directories. It quickly recreated it, with the same mail. Nothing new.
All three mail accounts are on different servers, running two different IMAP servers (Courier-IMAP and UW-imap). I have checked on one, and when mail quits, it closes all imapd processes. There are no other mail connections open, so I don't think it's a locking issue. I don't think it's a server issue, because it's happening on all three of my mail accounts.
Mail works fine with all the mail that is visible. You can delete messages, etc. If you log in via webmail and mark a message as unread, that change is reflected in Mail.app.
The short of the long: Mail.app just won't see any new mail since about 11pm last night.
Help! Any thoughts?
Thanks,
Seth

After trying lots of other ideas (including removing a mail account and recreating it), I have deleted my preference files and my Library/Mail folder. Starting over completely from scratch seems to have fixed it.
I'm disappointed that I could find a better solution.

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Apple Mail won't retrieve new mail from Yahoo IMAP

I've been using Apple Mail with my Yahoo/Rogers account via IMAP for months with no problems.
Starting a few weeks ago, new mail in the Yahoo Inbox does not get delivered to Apple Mail.
I know there's lots of new mail - I logged into mail.yahoo.com with Safari, and see lots of unread messages in the inbox.
It's not a password problem. The Connection Doctor shows 'green': access to both the IMAP and SMTP servers is successful.
I have many other IMAP folders configured, and they all sync fine between Yahoo and the Mac.
Apple Mail is configured to use imap.mail.yahoo.com, port 993 with SSL.
I've tried:
- rebooting the iMac.
- quitting/restarting Apple Mail
- taking account offline, then back on-line.
- Ctrl-clicking on the Inbox and forcing it to Synchronize "Yahoo Mail".
- calling Apple. I spent an hour on the phone with a pleasant tech there. He concluded it's a Yahoo problem.
I found one thing that fixed it temporarily: last week I deleted my e-mail account from Apple Mail. Of course, this deleted all my mailboxes in Apple Mail. Years of messages vanished. Then I quit Mail, restarted it, and configured it anew with my Yahoo account credentials. Mail then proceeded to log on to the Yahoo server and sync everything over IMAP. It took quite a while (over an hour), but eventually everything in my Inbox, Sent folder, and a couple dozen folders ('mailboxes') of saved messages reappeared. Including all the unread mail that had been waiting on the Yahoo mail server.
That was a week ago, and my Apple Mail inbox had receiving new e-mail with no problems until two days ago. Once again, new incoming messages are not getting synced. This 'fix' (delete all messages and resync from scratch) is not a practical solution.
Any ideas?
(iMac has 10.8.5. Mail is 6.6)

@riiich,
As I last reported, I temporarily 'fixed' it by deleting the account from Apple Mail and creating it again. Thanks to IMAP, Mail then synced all the mail folders (took a couple of hours - I have a lot of mail folders), and then it was working again. For a few days. Then the problem returned - new mail arriving in my Yahoo Inbox would not sync to the Inbox in Apple Mail.
I spent hours trying to resolve it. Changed password. Rebuilt Mail's index. Ran Disk Utility on my hard drive. Etc. Etc. I have a lot of server-side folders (>30), and thought that maybe Apple+Yahoo were screwing up due the large number of folders (a.k.a. mailboxes) to sync. So I migrated a lot of the folders off the server (setting up new mailboxes On The Mac) in which to file my messages. That didn't help. Meanwhile, I started using Yahoo's webmail interface so I could get my new mail. Then one morning (perhaps a week later), the inbox spontaneously started syncing again. I had done nothing the day before - it just started working overnight.
Based on this experience, I concluded that the F***-up is entirely on the Yahoo side and has nothing to do with my Mac nor Apple's software. My ultimate fix has been to abandon Yahoo Mail. Prior to Christmas, I moved my mail account to another service provider who provides IMAP. Then configured my Yahoo account to forward all incoming mail to the new server (which has a new e-mail address). Since doing so, I've had zero problems. All messages sent to my old Yahoo address get immediately forwarded to the new mail server, which has been syncing to Apple Mail with no problems at all.

Mail suddenly duplicates all previous emails and won't retrieve new ones

At around 3pm today I saw that my my mac mail program download a 2nd copy of all the messages on my server, and won't retrieve any newer ones since. My Iphone will retrieve new ones and I am able to send from my mac mail program but just not receive.... I went on to my website email server and all the messages are still there too...

Sometimes messages left on the server clog up the account there, or Mail may end up losing track of which messages have already been downloaded, or Mail may choke on a particular message it cannot download and that prevents it from downloading the rest as well. Solving this problem will probably require removing one or more messages from the server.
You may tell Mail to remove from the server all the messages that have already been downloaded by means of Preferences > Accounts > Advanced > Remove now. Alternatively, you may use the Account Info window to remove specific messages from the server — choose Get Info (⌘I) from the Action menu (gear icon) located below the mailbox list in the main Mail window. And if the account allows web access, you may also remove messages from the server that way.
Try removing from the server messages that have already been downloaded and/or the first message not downloaded yet (i.e. the message that Mail appears to be choking on).

TS2537 Apple Mail won't retrieve new messages

Hi,
I have a user in my company who is using an iMac 27" 3.4GHz OSx 10.6.8 and Apple Mail 4.5 with GoDaddy IMAP settings. Recently all mails after 25/12/2011 are missing in his Apple Mail but it is available on GoDaddy's web mail. I've tried moving [email protected]+Mac-xxxxx from findings in other forums but to no avail. This has also affected the email that is retrieved in the iPad as well.
Can someone help me out with this please?
Thank you very much.

@riiich,
As I last reported, I temporarily 'fixed' it by deleting the account from Apple Mail and creating it again. Thanks to IMAP, Mail then synced all the mail folders (took a couple of hours - I have a lot of mail folders), and then it was working again. For a few days. Then the problem returned - new mail arriving in my Yahoo Inbox would not sync to the Inbox in Apple Mail.
I spent hours trying to resolve it. Changed password. Rebuilt Mail's index. Ran Disk Utility on my hard drive. Etc. Etc. I have a lot of server-side folders (>30), and thought that maybe Apple+Yahoo were screwing up due the large number of folders (a.k.a. mailboxes) to sync. So I migrated a lot of the folders off the server (setting up new mailboxes On The Mac) in which to file my messages. That didn't help. Meanwhile, I started using Yahoo's webmail interface so I could get my new mail. Then one morning (perhaps a week later), the inbox spontaneously started syncing again. I had done nothing the day before - it just started working overnight.
Based on this experience, I concluded that the F***-up is entirely on the Yahoo side and has nothing to do with my Mac nor Apple's software. My ultimate fix has been to abandon Yahoo Mail. Prior to Christmas, I moved my mail account to another service provider who provides IMAP. Then configured my Yahoo account to forward all incoming mail to the new server (which has a new e-mail address). Since doing so, I've had zero problems. All messages sent to my old Yahoo address get immediately forwarded to the new mail server, which has been syncing to Apple Mail with no problems at all.

Phantom Blank Spam blocking Mail from retrieving new mail in Apple Mail

Over the past few days my wife and I have both had difficulties downloading pop-3 mail from our accounts (from a UK based ISP, UKonline) onto our separate computers (Powerbook G4 and MacBook). I have no idea yet whether this is affecting other ISPs or other Mac or PC platforms or mail clients, but it is definitely affecting both of our Mail apps running under 10.4.7.
The problem seems to revolve around blank email messages being received into our respective accounts by at our ISPs mail server.
These blank messages, presumably some form of spam have no sender, no recipient, no date, no source code, no body text and no subject.
These 'phantom' blank emails appear to be the root of the problem as once they are manually removed from our server-side inbox (either through Apple Mail's 'Get Info' / 'Remove from Server' function, or via our ISPs webmail facility), the email starts picking up mail automatically again–immediately, without any other intervention other than clicking 'Get Mail'. Until they are removed, Apple Mail will NOT collect any more mail, automatically or manually through 'Get Mail'.
I have contacted my ISP and to date had no firm response from them. One of their operatives suggest I contact Apple as his Windows PC email still works and retrieves mail when these blank phantom messages reach his server-side inbox waiting to be collected.
The fact that these messages have no date means that under Mail's 'Get Info' / 'Remove from Server' facility, they always appear at the top with the CURRENT date and time when sorted by date. In this way, they are easy to spot. Also, if sorted by size, they also appear at the top because they are 0k in size. They appear to act as a blockage to receiving new mail until they are cleared.
I'd be grateful to hear if anyone else is having this problem or has found a solution to it, or indeed whether this is an ISP problem.
With thanks
Jamie
Powerbook G4 17" 1.67GHz & MacBook 1.83 Mac OS X (10.4.7) Macuser since 1987; Apple IIe veteran.

Hello Jamie.
These 'phantom' blank emails appear to be the root of the problem
as once they are manually removed from our server-side inbox
(either through Apple Mail's 'Get Info' / 'Remove from Server' function,
or via our ISPs webmail facility), the email starts picking up mail
automatically again–immediately, without any other intervention
other than clicking 'Get Mail'. Until they are removed, Apple Mail
will NOT collect any more mail, automatically or manually through
'Get Mail'.
What is your setting for removing messages from the server when downloaded by the Mail.app?
If set to right away, does this have any effect?
One of their operatives suggest I contact Apple as his Windows
PC email still works and retrieves mail when these blank
phantom messages reach his server-side inbox waiting to be collected.
Of course - especially if this operative is using Microsoft's Outlook or OE which usually don't have problems downloading anything including viruses, adware and spyware.
I'm not sure why these "Ghost" spam messages cause this problem with the Mail.app but these are obviously sent by a spammer to cause problems.
How about your ISP doing something about blocking all messages at the incoming mail server that are completely blank such as these so they don't arrive in any of their customer's Inbox mailbox at the server since these messages are intended to cause problems and are completely blank anyway? No different from any other type of spam or as messages are scanned for viruses at the server. Although Apple needs to look into this, your ISP is not completely off the hook or has no responsibility IMO.

TS3276 Gmail not retrieving new mail...error

http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?answer=8770 .... this error appears and I cannot retrieve any new mail and cannot remove the error. This happened after I backed up using Time Machine. My computer is also running slow after the backup.

Could it be that Mail is in an "offline" state? Is Mailbox > Go Online enabled or disabled?
Open Window > Connection Doctor. What does it say?
If you log into your mail accounts on the web, do the messages appear there?
Choose Get Info (⌘I) from the Action menu located below the mailboxes list in the main Mail window to open the Account Info window -- type "Account Info" in the search field of Mail Help for more information on this feature. Does Mail display there the messages that it doesn't download?

Mail won't get new mail after a while

Running Mail app on my Powerbook on OS 10.5.8. I use this as my work computer. More and more frequently I find that Mail is not retrieving my messages after being open for a while. The main account is a gmail IMAP account. I am also running Mail Act-On and MailTags, which are key utilities in my workflow.
I try clicking on Get New Mail, or "Synchronize IMAP Account," and taking all accounts offline and then taking them online, but these do not help.
Quitting and relaunching Mail sometimes helps, but not always! Is there anything else I should try? This is making me crazy!

I think you should open the Mail folder -- Home/Library/Mail -- and locate the file named MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded3 and delete it, after having Quit Mail. Open each POP account folder in the Mail folder, and make sure there are no other files of similar name within these folders.
Deleting this file, and relaunching Mail will result in its downloading whatever messages remain on the server, and may give you some duplicates, but this import file will be renewed and fresh.
Ernie

Mail.app doesn't retrieve new mail

MAIL was asking constantly for Password on IMAP server. Couldn't hold on to it. Now I don't even get that. Activity Window show near constant cycling of Registering Synchronization Preferences (I think that was it). And ... never retrieved mail from IMAP server. ISP says they have no answer on their end and their experience with MAIL since 10.5 has been buggy, with no fixes on their end. Suggestions, please?

I too am having this problem with Mail (on 10.5.6). Im not sure when the problem started, but I have noticed it more recently (past couple of months).
I too have an iPhone and receive my MobileMe email and Exchange (university account) email instantly. I understand that both of these are correctly configured for 'push' email on my iPhone, but I would have thought that they would only lag by a few seconds in Mail on my MacBook Pro.
I have often found that I receive the email on my iPhone and then wish to reply to it on my laptop, only to discover that even if I press 'Get Mail' the email has not been retrieved.
The only way that I have found to fix this is to quit the mail application, re-launch it and then find the new mail waiting for me.
I can understand that this lag will be more obvious on the exchange account (due to the iPhone fully supporting exchange and active-sync). But I dont understand why I get a large lag (sometimes 10 minutes) with my mobileme account, even when mail is set to check every minute.
Thanks in advance for anyones help.
David Macknelly

Mac Mail won't fetch new mail NOT GMAIL

I'm having a frustrating issue with mac mail? I've been using mac mail for year with my work account with NO issues.
For some reason all of the sudden when I hit the "Get Mail" button or when it automatically checks for mail it is not pulling in my new messages.
IF I use the "synchronize "account" or if I close and re-open mac mail, or if I take account offline then back online it WILL pull in my new messages.
I think this is the same issue they were having with gmail? This seems to have stated when the new mac mail update came through on Friday. It seems like it fixed gmail but messed up something else?
Is anybody else seeing this issue? Is there anything I can do to fix it or will there be yet another fix? I'm trying ot rebuild my e-mail account now.
Jason

i'm having this same issue. mail 'dings' indicating there is new mail, but it does not appear. i can find it at the .mac site however... it will arrive in my mail inbox some hours later...

Mail Won't Download New Mail!

I got a new powerbook in December and everything worked wonderfully. I set up my mail account and it work just as it should. However, when I left home (florida) and went back to college (virginia) and tried to open up mail, it was no longer downloading new mail! It gave an error message and it related it to the network connection or something...so after longtime frustration I just deleted the account thinking that if I did, I could just make the same account again and all would be well.
NOT THE CASE!
So, I've looked at countless tutorials thinking that I may have entered the wrong information in the different fields and followed step by step all the information in each field. Nothing seems to work. It will let me add my account as IMAP gmail and all the rest but not as POP but I dont really think this is the problem because either way no mail is bringing brought to my inbox. what can I do? I think that it may have to do with my university's firewall that may be blocking it someway. Is there anyway to by pass this to get some mail!!!
PLEASE HELP

Try removing the account from Mail and rentering it as a new account.

Mail Won't get new mail

I have just upgraded from Jaguar to Tiger and have been experiencing intermittent problems fetching new mail from my yahoo server. Once in a while all works well, then others it does nothing, and still others it asks for my password over and over and over again, but will not gather the mail. Was I supposed to reenter my accounts in the preferences section... I thought the upgrade would process all of that. I can still get the info directly of the yahoo home page but I prefer Apples mail program.... when it is working
Thanks for any insight.... Don

Hello Don.
Did any of the same occur at any time before upgrading to Tiger?
What is your time interval setting for automatically checking for new mail? If set to every minute, change it to every 5 or 15 minutes which should prevent the prompt to manually enter the account's password. This can occur when set to check for new mail every minute if there are a number of messages to download and/or the connection with the incoming mail server is not closed before the next automatic check for new messages.
You can also try running Keychain First Aid on your Login Keychain via Keychain Access.
Since Mail isn't downloading any new messages regardless, quit Mail first and using the Finder go to Home > Library > Mail > this POP account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account) > MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2. If there is a MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded file also without the number 2, delete both files and empty the Trash.
Launch Mail and if successful any previously downloaded messages that remain on the server will be downloaded again along with any new messages available at the server not yet downloaded by Mail.
In addition, did you check your boot volume for any directory problems with Disk First Aid repair via Disk Utility when booted from the Tiger retail install package before installing Tiger?
If not, check this link for system troubleshooting procedures and when doing so, follow all steps/instructions in the order provided.
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/repairprocess.html
If you have multiple network configurations active which are not regularly used or required, deselect any which are not actively used to turn them off or make sure the network port configuration being used is at the top of the list.

Mail won't retrieve mac mail

I thought you could still get mail in the mail program after July 1st if you were running OS 10.5. I woke up this morning and no new mail on my old iMac running OS 10.5.8. All my other devices are fine. I have a laptop running 10.6 and the mail program will get my .mac acco

Hello eveyone, MobileMe is dead... due to dead heads thinking at Apple, have you switched to iCloud yet?
Do not delete the old account yet. sign up for an iCloud account if you haven't.
I understand .mac mail will still come through. Do not delete the old account yet.
You cannot use .mac or MobileMe as type of Account, you have to choose IMAP when setting up, otherwise Mail is hard coded to change imap.mail.me.com to mail.me.com & smtp.mail.me.com to smtp.me.com, no matter what you try to enter.
iCloud Mail setup, do not choose .mac or MobileMe as type, but choose IMAP...
On second step where it asks "Description", it has to be a unique name, but you can still use your email address.
IMAP (Incoming Mail Server) information:
          •          Server name: imap.mail.me.com
          •          SSL Required: Yes
          •          Port: 993
          •          Username: [email protected] (use your @me.com address from your iCloud account)
          •          Password: Your iCloud password
SMTP (outgoing mail server) information:
          •          Server name: smtp.mail.me.com
          •          SSL Required: Yes
          •          Port: 587
          •          SMTP Authentication Required: Yes
          •          Username: [email protected] (use your @me.com address from your iCloud account)
          •          Password: Your iCloud password
Also, you must upgrade your password to meet the new criteria: 8 characters, including upper and lower case and numbers. If you have an older password that does not meet these criteria, when you try to setup mail on your mac, using all of the IMAP criteria listed above, it will still give a server error message. Go to   http://appleid.apple.com         then follow directions to change your password, then go back to setting up your mail using the IMAP instructions above.
Thanks to dpepper...
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3867171?tstart=0

GMail - iPhone cleared out inbox / other folders & won't receive new mail.

My GMail has been working fine on my iPhone, but yesterday the iPhone cleared out all my folders without asking and will no longer receive any emails. But I can still send messages, and my GMail account via the web browser is still intact and receiving new mail. My iPhone is definitely online. Why? Help!

Mine is working fine. Try deleting the Gmail account from the iPhone, then re-adding it.

Mail won't retrieve new messeges?

I have an ongoing issue with Mail, where periodically, Mail refuses to retrieve any new messages from my POP server, even though new messages exist, and the messages actually show up when you select Get Info on the account. Yet, they refuse to download, and Mail acts as if no new messages exist when attempting to download the new messages.
This problem has been going on for a while (few months), popping up every couple weeks for a few days at a time, and then all of a sudden, everything works fine again, and all the messages download. I've tried deleting preferences and disabling/re-enabling the account to no avail. It's really frustrating, because I can't use Mail to view my messages, and am forced to use another mail client (like Thunderbird, which works fine) or webmail. Is anyone else experiencing an issue like this, or know how to rectify it?
Thanks for any help!

Ok, this is strange. When I clicked "Get Info" and the messages on the server were populating, he message immediately following the two that keep downloading (the first of the messages that won't download) registered as 6.3k. After the "Get Info" window populated with all of the messages on the server, it restarted again from the beginning, except this time, it listed the message as 0k. Now, all of a sudden, Mail starts to download the messages, and everything is working fine again. But, this will happen again. It keeps stopping and then starting back up mysteriously like this. Any idea what could be going on? I think it has to be a bug in Mail that needs to be fixed, but I have no idea what to report to Apple. Thanks again for your help!

Mail won't make new-mail or sent-mail sounds after sleep

I've had this issue for the last 6 months, probably ever since 10.7.3 update in May.
Mail stops making the usual noises after going to sleep one or two times. The weird thing is that it will store all the unplayed noises in a buffer and then suddenly decide to play a few months worth of sent-mail and incoming-mail noises at a rate of one per second for several minutes upon waking up. Apple was no help.
Restarting seems to solve the problem until the next sleep cycle when it starts up again. I did a full restore twice and it made no difference
Apple's mail specialist hadn't ever heard of this issue before when I called in September. It's not a game stopper but I worry it might be a hardware issue that I'd like to have fixed before my warrentee runs out.

I've never seen anything like this reported before. Verify/repair your disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
If the problem persists, proceed as follows:
1. Open /Applications/Utilities/Console.
2. From the File menu, choose either Open Console Log, or Open System Log, or both, so that the Console application displays the contents of both system.log and console.log.
3. Try to reproduce the problem, and look at the bottom of the Console windows for messages that could have been written there as a result. Do you see anything that could provide a clue as to what's going on?
Now, try this:
1. Go to Apple Menu > System Preferences > Accounts, and create a new user account for testing purposes.
2. Either log out of your main user account or just quit Mail so that it does not interfere with the other user account.
3. Log in as the newly created user and set up Mail anew there. Does the problem happen there as well?

Won't retrieve new mail

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