weird problem with mail.app

[sithious]

... my dad is using os x 10.1.2 on a 350 mhz imac ... for some reason, mail.app gave up sending mails for no apparent reason yesterday.
what's happening is this: when he attempts to send a mail, the mail goes to the outbox, the little arrows spin around for quite a while, then they stop spinning, as if the mail had been sent, but in fact, it's still sitting there in the outbox. we tried several test mails to me, which never arrived, so, quite obviously, mail is actually not going out at all.
funny thing is, he can still receive mail and use the rest of the web as per normal.

we've tried rebuilding all the mailboxes, we restarted, we logged out and back in again, no change from mail.app ...

any suggestions?

[cybergoober]

Sounds like the SMTP settings are screwed up. Make sure they are correct. Mail.app->Mail menu->Preferences->Accounts->"account"->Edit->SMTP Host.
Substitute the actual account name for "account"

Good luck.

[sithious]

nope, they're the same as they ever were ... thanks anyway ...
any other suggestions?

[doublejoint]

I have the same problem with my setup. When I get mail from my mac account, then I can't reply unless right before I send the reply I switch the little scroll menu to my verizon account and send it from that. Even outlook express has never been able to send from my mac accounts, only from my internet service provider. I have the smtp.verizon on my mac account settings too, and also tried smtp.mac.com. I think it's supposed to work though, but doesn't. However, somehow my mom has her computer sending from her mac account just fine. crazy stuff

[SCrossman]

What does the activity viewer window show when you try to send?
I have seen the mail.app leave mail in the outbox when it was actually delivered to the SMTP server. It would then stay there in the outbox and appear as though it was never sent. I could delete it, create another email to the same address, click send and it would work.
This was occurring because the SMTP server was not replying back to the mail.app soon enough. The email server was very busy doing scanning of some large files for viruses when this happened. I had to check the email server logs to find out what was going on. The only reason I could do this is because I am the email/postmaster administrator of the email server.
smtp.mac.com will only send email from a valid mac.com email address and is authenticated. Some services, gte.net verizon.net earthlink.net, block port 25, which is used to talk to smtp servers, if the from email address being used is not in their domain. For example, I cannot send email using smtp.mac.com using my scrossman@earthlink.net address or the other way around. This is done to prevent spammers using the smtp servers as relays for their junk email.

[genghiscohen]

Yes, keep an eye on the activity window, and on Console as well.
My impression is that the problem may well lie with your dad's ISP, rather than Mail.app. Is he using a mac.com account, or something else?

[sithious]

...thanks for all the ideas, guys ...
it was apparently the isp, it's started working again... oh well. no idea what was wrong, but at least it's working now ...

[doublejoint]

I'm still a little foggy though. Is there a way that I could settup my email account info so that I wouldn't have to switch to send from my verizon email everytime? What would I want to put in the smtp box? I have smtp.verizon.net right now. Do I need to fixe the verizon port blocking thing somehow?