# Mac Mail going into Work Offline



## kbetts (Mar 21, 2009)

Most of my user base uses Windows but we do have a few Mac Users thrown in and not many techs that are proficient with Macs.

I have a customer with Mac OS 10.5.6, Mac Mail 3.5 (930.3) on an IMAC 9,1 (?).

He uses our pop email and also as a .mac mail account.  For about the past week, both email accounts have been going into Work Offline status on their own.  He has tried forcing in Take accounts online, and while the status does show online, he is not able to send or receive mail from either account, and it throws him back into offline mode.  He is able to access the internet via Safari and he can access his email (through us) from the web and on his iphone.  Eventually, the mail program will go back to online, on its own and he is able to send and receive mail like normal. 

I have scoured the forums and seen a few people having the same issue and got it fixed, but none of them said how they fixed it.  Any help that you can give would be greatly appreciated.  Please let me know if there is any additional information that I can provide.

Thank you.

Kim


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## edadams (Mar 22, 2009)

Hi Kim
I have had similar issues, it may be the iPhone opening a connection to Mail server and locking out Mail in the process, I have seen this happen on many clients setup and its very frustrating. Try disable the iPhone mail for a while and see if it makes a difference.
If you click on the exclamation mark next to inbox does it say why the mailbox is offline?

Ed


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## dparsons (Apr 9, 2009)

I am having the same problem and have had it before. I'm using Mail 3.5 and OS 10.5.5.  Online status showed my ISP was offline. I changed to online, nothing happened, I quit Mail and re-opened, Excalamation Mark still there. and online status reads "online"
The message I get after clicking on the exclamation mark is:

The mail server denied access to the account &#8220;iprimus&#8221; because an administrator or other mail client was using it when Mail tried to log in. Please try again later.

The server error encountered was: user mailbox locked

I know I have had this problem before. I can't recall whether or not I discovered how to unlock it or it resolved itself.

I hope some one can help, I can see I am not the only one with this problem.

dp


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## James_Lelyveld (Aug 18, 2009)

Do you have a blackberry or similar that uses the same account (or access the mail account from another machine)? I'm having a similar issue and I think it's my blackberry (or at least the blackberry service) that's locking the account. 

I haven't found a solution yet either but will update this if I do.

JL


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## dparsons (Aug 18, 2009)

No I don't use a Blackberry.  My problem with MacMail going offline is intermitent. Sometimes it is locked, then I try again later and it is OK. It is so frustrating that I rarely use Macmail, and mainly read my emails on my server.
dp


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## James_Lelyveld (Aug 20, 2009)

It turns out the issue I was having was to do with the size of my mail box on the server, once that was reduced Mail started working for me again. I've now got it set up to clear mail out of the server mailbox a day after it's been downloaded so hopefully that will keep things running.


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