How to (at least semi-reliably) get Apple Mail back online to send/ receive.
We've all come across a copy of Apple Mail that does not connect on incoming or outgoing for no apparent reason (which coincidentally happens to be the programs reason of choice). Many times the user will have other addresses (seems like Apple Mail folks are also Gmail folks predominately) and you may or may not have connectivity on the other accounts or will just have issues with incoming or outgoing but not both.
Why isn't Apple Mail connecting?
At the end of the day, we have no way of knowing exactly why Apple Mail decided to stop functioning normally with the mail account when examining from the mail provider side. That being said, past experience and some digging from Apple's side sheds some light on what may be done to correct the connection issue.
Even when you aren't actively going into your Apple Mail program, you could theoretically leave it open for weeks, during which Apple Mail can effectively time out and either show it as the address being 'Offline' or sometimes showing now difference in the display in the Apple Mail interface.
So how do we fix it?
- Take account offline in Apple Mail. Right click or two finger click on the mailbox in question from the left hand side accounts pane and choose to 'Take account offline.'
- Quit Apple Mail. Right click or two finger click on the Apple Mail icon in your Dock (stamp icon with an eagle on it) and select to 'Quit' or to 'Force Quit.'
- Turn off airport. Open your wifi menu and select to 'Turn off Air Port' or 'Turn Off Wifi.'
- Turn airport back on. Open your wifi menu and select to 'Turn on Air Port' or 'Turn on Wifi.'
- Open Apple Mail. You should know how to do this if you're reading this article.
- Take account online in Apple Mail. Right click or two finger click on the mailbox in question from the left hand side accounts pane and choose to 'Take account online.'
*Now theres's a fair chance that the aforementioned steps won't work and if they don't, there is probably something fairly busted in your setup that warrants further Googling.
OS X Mavericks-specific issues.
Apparently Mavericks has had it's fair share of bugs in general, much less pertaining solely to Apple Mail. Per our friends at 9to5mac.com,
For some email providers, new email messages in Mail may only appear to arrive when Mail is first opened. No new email arrives until Mail is quit and reopened.
Their fix is very similar to mine as I mentioned above, suggesting that you:
- Take account offline in Apple Mail. Right click or two finger click on the mailbox in question from the left hand side accounts pane and choose to 'Take account offline.'
- Get All New Mail. Right click or two finger click on the mailbox in question from the left hand side accounts pane and choose to 'Get All New Mail.'
To get mail from here on out then when you are having this issue, you would just do the above steps in order when experiencing the issue.
OS X Yosemite-specific issues.
It seems that in some cases, the OS X upgrade to Yosemite has been known to break certain connnections in the Apple Mail application and needs to be fixed from time to time. The best course of action seems to be checking your account settings and verifying that they are the same ones your email host provided you with. Don't ask us why but for some reason Yosemite can throw them off.
There is an automatic discovery setting in Apple Mail that prolongs the issue if it is not changed/ turned off and will continuously try to automatically detect the incorrect settings that Yosemite has already re-associated the mailbox with. Turning this off should allow you to manually change your settings on the mailbox back to 'factory specs.'
- Open Mail Accounts. Click the 'Mail' tab in to top left of your screen and select 'Accounts' from the dropdown.
- Deselect Auto Account Settings. Select the mailbox in question from the Accounts list and uncheck the box that reads 'Automatically detect and maintain account settings' from the Advanced tab.
- Verify Account Details. Make sure all server addresses, usernames, passwords, and ports are correct on the 'Account Information' tab per your email providers settings.