Comments on: Where are my e-mails?

Question: Where are my e-mails?

purplefiber — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:30:15 -0800

Apple Mail has suddenly stopped retrieving my messages...

I have Apple Mail set up to receive messages from several gmail accounts and a hotmail account. This has always worked with no problems, but for some reason on Tuesday it stopped receiving messages from all but one account. I am able to read my messages by using Gmail in my web browser, but this is very frustrating since I use Apple Mail to categorize and store e-mails. I tried Connection Doctor, and tried changing/updating my passwords... no success. Has anyone experienced this? I especially can't understand why ONE account still works.
Thanks!

By: KimG

KimG — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 16:59:52 -0800

How big is your Mail-folder? it could be bulging and Mail will start to get annoying if it gets too full. And in this respect 10.3 is worse than 10.4.

By: majick

majick — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 17:23:03 -0800

When you run the Console application (in Applications:Utilities), what does it say when you're retrieving messages? That information ought to say quite a lot about what's happening.

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 18:40:56 -0800

What do you see if you open the Activity window ("Activity Viewer" under the Window menu)?

By: purplefiber

purplefiber — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 18:52:59 -0800

KimG- It's big but I tried deleting a huge number of e-mails and it didn't make a difference.

majick: a lot of numbers, "purplefiber's computer is configured", and "user interaction is not allowed"

Armitage Shanks: I saw the Activity viewer checking for messages a few seconds ago- it went through all my accounts and appeared to have no difficulty, but didn't receive any messages.

By: pointilist

pointilist — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 20:34:49 -0800

Something like this was just happening to me. After jiggling everythng I could think of on my mac I went to gmail and reset the pop settings to what they already were. Seems to be working.

By: hattifattener

hattifattener — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 21:23:45 -0800

The activity view in Mail.app lies to you, BTW — it has only a very rough correlation to what Mail is doing. It'll often claim to be checking one mailbox while Mail is actually looking at a different one, etc.

Purplefiber — did you expunge the deleted messages (cmd-K)? If not, your mailbox is still large. (You might have it set to do that automatically.)

By: chunking express

chunking express — Fri, 27 Oct 2006 12:24:32 -0800

I had this exact problem for a very long time. I think certain messages make Mail choke. Here is how I solved the problem.