Gmail, iPhone, and IMAP woes.

October 11, 2010 1:27 PM

As of a week or so ago, I'm unable to check my gmail account on my iPhone using IMAP. Please advise.

I get this error message: The mail server "imap.googlemail.com" is not responding. Verify that you have entered the correct account info in Mail settings.

The settings are correct, as far as I can tell, and I hadn't changed them when the problem started. Originally I had imap.gmail.com as the server, and changing it to imap.googlemail.com worked for a day or two -- then it putzed out again. I've done a captcha reset, which did nothing. It's an iPhone 4. Poking around the Google forums I'm seeing many people with the same problem, but no official recognition of it.

What could it be? Please note that writing this has stretched my "how computers work" capability to its limits, so I'd appreciate simple answers. Oh, and I'm using IMAP for this reason.

posted by The corpse in the library to technology (8 answers total)

I had a similar problem with my email (not gmail) and it went away when I rebooted the phone. Have you tried that?

(I didn't think of it myself, a friend advised me.)
posted by miss tea at 1:47 PM on October 11, 2010

A firned of mine had this same problem — rebooting did not help. Instead, he deleted the account from the phone and set it up again. This worked, and being an IMAP connection, he didn't lose any data.
posted by crickets at 1:50 PM on October 11, 2010

Did the "Enable IMAP" setting get changed in your Gmail settings page?
posted by Burhanistan at 2:06 PM on October 11, 2010

Rebooting didn't do it, and my Gmail settings look right (thanks for that photo).

I've been hesitant to delete the account, but maybe I'll copy down all the settings and be brave.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:09 PM on October 11, 2010

Just make sure that you have everything you want to keep in your normal web-based Gmail page. If so, blow away your iPhone settings with no fear, as they will come back.
posted by Burhanistan at 2:11 PM on October 11, 2010

OK, it's working! For now... let's hope for good. Thanks.

If anyone knows why deleting the account and then setting it back up works, I'd be interested.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:31 PM on October 11, 2010

I have had this problem before and haven't found the cause but one possible solution is configuring the Gmail account as an Exchange account via Google Sync, which offers the same functionality as IMAP plus the ability to sync contacts.
posted by camcgee at 7:19 PM on October 11, 2010 [2 favorites]

Argh! It's doing it again, and once again I hadn't changed any settings or done anything else to set it off. So that's only a temporary fix, it seems.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:05 PM on October 16, 2010