Not receiving emails?

Planet X

Young son was setting up his FaceB account recently. he must've done something,anyway, I'm not receiving emails on three accounts. A Mac acc and 3 Gmail accs.
Any clue as how to remedy this please. Can send emails and seem to be receiving but not showing up.

Cheers.

Liameter

Assuming you are using Apple's "Mail" email client, click on "Mailbox" (in the menu bar, top of the screen) and select Go Online.

Planet X

All accounts are online it seems?

Planet X

Last emails received, 9th Feb.

Liameter

Go to Mail --> Preferences --> Advanced
and make sure that "Enable this account" is ticked for each active account.

I can't think of anything else that might cause this without also generating an error message.

cnocbui

I would check Preferences -> Accounts and make sure the incoming mail server, user name and password are all correct.

When you said "seem to be receiving but not showing up" Do you mean you have enabled the activity window and can see emails being download but they don't appear in the in box?

Planet X

Incoming Mail Server, mail.mac.com
User Name: Joe blogs etc
Password: correct

gmails,
Incoming Mail server: pop.gmail.com etc etc


Outgoing Mail Server(SMPT): smpt.mac.com:"joeblogs"


Still cannot get it sorted?

Sad Professor

Need more info. When you click on "Get Mail", what happens? Is it downloading the unread mail, is it giving an error message, etc?

Planet X

Click "Get Mail", the "spinning circles" appear beside all four accounts. no emails have shown since 9th Feb.
No error messages appear.

cnocbui

In Mail, go Window -> Activity to open the activity window. Put the window somewhere you can see it all the time then check for mail and see if it shows a progress bar in the activity window and a figure for messages being downloaded.

I am thinking that possibly a rule has been created that is putting your mail somewhere other than the inbox.

If you had a real connection problem there should be an exclamation mark always next to the inbox.

Planet X

Yes, there is a "loading bar" with a red squarish symbol at the end of it. On the Mac account in the activity window is says, and the messages flash by in a second or two, "Opening Mailbox, entering idle state, exiting idle state, closing mail box"

Same with the three gmail accounts.
Thanks for helping me.


Even on www.me.com there's nothing in my mailbox since 9th Feb.?

cnocbui

This doesn't seem to be making much sense. No settings on your Mac should prevent there being mails in a webmail account.

Could your mail accounts be being checked and the mails deleted from the servers from another machine?

Check Mail->Preferences->Rules to see if there are any user created rules that are doing something with the messages. User created ones will likely start Rule # There are probably a couple default ones Apple put there as well.

Sad Professor

Planet X wrote: »

Even on www.me.com there's nothing in my mailbox since 9th Feb.?

Is it the same with Gmail?

Planet X

No. Gmail mails are coming up on the gmail site OK.
No problem there.

barryj

You can enable logging in Apple's mail app. This may help figure out what's going on. To do this, you make sure mail is closed, then run the script that's in /Library/Scripts/Mail Scripts/

It's called something like 'turn on logging.scpt'.

You'll be prompted to enable logging for sending or receiving or both. You probably just want 'checking'. It will then open mail with logging enabled. To view the logs, open the console app. When you quit mail again, logging will be disabled - it's only when you run it from the above script.

You may be able to glean something from the logs.

- barry

Planet X

Tried that Barry..............."Mail Activity" yesterday, downloaded 8 mails, just now 5 mails.....cannot locate them?
It doesn't have an 8 or 5 unopened mails indicator beside the Mail Stamp symbol either. So it seems to be receiving mails, but I can't locate them????

barryj

Have you checked your rules? Could you have a rule enabled that's deleting/moving mails somewhere?

- barry

Planet X

Thanks Barry, but could you help me there please. Not too up on computers obviously. Where do I find the Mail rules and what should I look for?
Thanks in advance.

barryj

If you're not sure where the rules are, then you probably didn't change them, but worth checking just in case. You'll find them under Preferences. Open preferences and click the icon labelled 'Rules'. You'll see a list of any rules that get applied to mails. There may be one for 'News from Apple' it basically sets the colour of the mail for any mails received from Apple - a bit of a sneaky way to highlight their own mail.

It's possible to set up rules to do all sorts of things when mail arrives like moving it into other folders, deleting, highlighting etc.

Now if there are no rules there that would be relevant to your mails, I'd suggest rebuilding your mail index - I'll list the steps you need below. Usual warnings of ensure your backups are up to date apply, but this shouldn't cause any problems, and we'll make a backup copy of the file we're changing anyway.

Do the following:

* Close your Mail application

* Open the Terminal application (you'll find it under Utilities in Applications folder)

* In the window that opens type the following three lines, pressing return at the end of each. If you get an error from any of them, don't continue. The second line is just making a copy of the file we're going to rebuild.

cd Library/Mail
cp "Envelope Index" "Envelope Index.bak"
sqlite3 "Envelope Index" vacuum

* Now you can open Mail again, and see if it works.

- barry

Planet X

I'm assuming Mail Preferences? No Rules icon there?

barryj

Planet X wrote: »

I'm assuming Mail Preferences? No Rules icon there?

Yes - Mail preferences - have you a very old version of mail/Mac OS? I thought rules had been there for quite a while?

- barry

Planet X

10.5.8

Mail Version 3.6

Planet X

Hi Barry,
Did the Terminal instructions, but to start with, the Terminal window wasn't empty. It contained,
Last Login: Tue Feb 22 18:24:14 on ttys000
myname-imac:>my name$

(My Name, my actual name)

Nothing happened. Mail will check for mail with spinning wheel on all 4 accounts.

barryj

Planet X wrote: »

Did the Terminal instructions, but to start with, the Terminal window wasn't empty. It contained,
Last Login: Tue Feb 22 18:24:14 on ttys000
myname-imac:>my name$

That's alright - that's normal.

Planet X wrote: »

Nothing happened. Mail will check for mail with spinning wheel on all 4 accounts.

Is this different from before?

Can you post the result of this commmand in terminal window (you can edit out any personal email address parts).

ls -l ~/Library/Mail

- barry