Mac OSX mail question

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been mail as supplied with Mac OSX. Everything work fine up until yesterday …

Now I get an error saying that the user name and password as defined in mail preferences were not accepted by the server. I checked the preferences, username and everything is fine. Besides, I don’t log into mail - it’s in the keychain. Still I retype the password for want of any better ideas.

I try using an internet client (pop3now) which I’ve used in the passed. Basically the same problem, i.e. the users name and/or passowrd are incorrect.

This indicated a mail system problem, not a local machine problem. So I spent quite some time this morning on the phone to IT support. I go straight to the systems manager, who tell me everything is fine his end. Indeed on telling him my password, he was able to log in as my using his client (Eudora). I had an unusually large number of emails in my account, he said, dating from 14th August. That was weird, since I have a pop account. Anyway since managed to log in, we tried my end. Again no luck with Mac OSX mail or pop3now. However, I tried telnet and was able to log in, an dread some email using ELM.

ELM is not a long term or even a short term solution since it doesn’t hand word documents etc, and I’m not really comfortable with it. I’m finding life really difficult without email, particularly since my new officemate has a tendancy to dive for the phone, but hasn’t yet learned the art of taking messages…

So does any Mac user have any ideas of what is going on, and even more importantly, how to fix it?

2

Dear Sir,

there are 2 things here … it maybe your Key Chain or it maybe your mail app.

I was say its the keychain - recreate it / remove it.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106973&SaveKCWindowURL=http%3A%2F%2Fkbase.info.apple.com%2Fcgi-bin%2FWebObjects%2Fkbase.woa%2Fwa%2FSaveKCToHomePage&searchMode=Expert&kbhost=kbase.info.apple.com&showButton=false&randomValue=100&showSurvey=false&sessionID=anonymous|155318494
Dude Mac OS X mail is dodgey … well the first couple of versions anyway. Make sure you have done the upgrade to 10.2.

3

Something similar happened to me recently when my ISP updated their database on me. What I did to fix it was crazy-simple: open Mail, go to Preferences and pick Accounts. Highlight your account and click Edit. In the Edit window, click the button at the bottom that says “Options…”. That window will have the outgoing mail server options. Change the authentication to “none”, save your changes by saying OK, and try it again. If it works, repeat with any other accounts you have in Mail.

Every ISP requires your username and password to receive mail, obviously, but some don’t require authentication when you send mail (with broadband and such, I guess it’s sufficient that you’re located on their network), and they get confused when you send the authentication information. If you have an outbound message in your outbox, it may be preventing the receipt of new mail, since I’ll wager the program just stops when it hits that first error. Anyway, give it a try, see if it works.

4

Yes sorry - i presumed ( don’t say it) this was an error on POP but SMTP in most cases does not require Auth ( where i am from)

5

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I’ve removed the password from the keychain, but no luck. I don’t have the authorisation ticked in preferences anyhow.

I’ll try and get my hands on 10.2, I guess (and learn to love ELM in the meantime :frowning: )

6

Hmmm… try starting from scratch. Create a NEW account will all new settings for the same account. This will ensure that there aren’t any flaky settings hindering you.

If you STILL have problems and the POP3 account is on the public internet, try checking out http://www.mail2web.com and see if you can access your account there with you name and password.

7

Thanks for the suggestions. it turns out the problem was indeed caused by the systems guys, but my boss (bloke) had to phone up to persuade them to take it seriously. He simply repeated all of the attempts I had made for himself, phoned up the systems guys and told them what he’d done (rather like I had done yesterday).

Explaination to him:

they had taken a back up of the server shortly before I started having problems. My client must’ve been running at that same time, meaning the process never shut down, I was unable to access the server and the email backup (all email I have recieved since early August) was deposited in my account

Explanation to me:

I had to phone the guy back after the downloading several hundred emails had finished. He read through the headers of a few “new” emails to see if he could delete them: “one of those emails is blocking everything up” :rolleyes: