Mail app won't read mail

[juliang]

Has anyone gotten the Mail app to work with an IMAP mail server? Mine just spins and spins when trying to look at the main mail folder, and shows absolutely nothing when I try to look at any other folder. The bizarre thing is that the icon in the dock knows about unread messages, but the app still refuses to display anything. Both Outlook Express and Netscape Communicator have no trouble dealing with the mailboxes, under both OS 9 and OS X Classic. Is there something you have to do to Mail to get it to process the mailboxes?

 

[Elder Dan]

You should't need to do anything special to make it work with IMAP. It sounds like it's at least connected to the server and gotten the info about what mailboxes you have and how many unread messages they have in them... You might try opening the Activity Viewer (it's under Mail's "Window" menu) and see what it says it's trying to do when it's stalled (getting headers, etc.).

 

[juliang]

Thanks, that was helpful. I learned two things:

1. The Mail app is searching my entire home directory. Given the amount of stuff I have NFS mounted, that should take a few hours. At least it provides a stop button. Is there a way to make it just stick to the one folder where mail is stored?

2. With the app now in a quiet state (i.e. not soaking up both of the CPUs) I'm able to select mailboxes. It refuses to recognize that any of my mailboxes have any mail. No other mail software has a problem. Is there a hidden switch somewhere in OS X Mail to get it to process mailboxes?