weird problem with mail.app

sithious

sithious

no longer a member
... 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?
 
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.
 
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. :confused: crazy stuff
 
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.
 
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?
 
...thanks for all the ideas, guys ... :D
it was apparently the isp, it's started working again... oh well. no idea what was wrong, but at least it's working now ...
:D :D
 
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?
 
I also use Verizon. From what I understand, Verizon will only let you send mail out using them if you use them for your connection.

I get my incoming mail from Yahoo but have to have it go out thru my Verizon account. So, when my recipients Reply, it goes to Verizon...but I just set up Verizon to forward to Yahoo.

Sounds confusing but it's really not.
 
doublejoint,
If you connect to the internet through xyz.net ISP you generally must use their smtp servers to send any email. For example, I am an Adelphia cable subscriber and they don't provide an email address to their users. So I don't have an smtp server to send mail.

The only way I can send email is the following :
1. A private email server in which I authenticate with a user name and password. The server will then send email from that address because it is setup to do so.
2. My mac.com email address, but I cannot send email if my address is not a mac.com address. I cannot send email through mac.com if my address is steve@crossman.com
3. A free email address like hotmail.com, etc.

You can always receive email from most any server, it is the sending that is more difficult. ISPs do this to prevent spamming or relaying of email through their servers. Some smtp servers require that in order to send email, you must have checked your email recently and authenticated.

GTE.net verizon.net earthlink.net and many others block port 25 to communicate to any smtp email server other than their own as well. I had to setup our email servers to listen on port 2500 and authenticate the user before sending email for that user. This allows our users to dial-up or connect through any ISP and send email to anyone using any email address.

I get confused too. But it is all done to reduce the spam to all of us, which can make it more difficult.

sithious : I would have suspected as much that was your problem, having seen similar problems with our company's own email server. I think there are some timeout values in the mail.app client that are causing some problems. Glad you got it working again. The first thing I have learned about when the 100 users I support with email/internet access is, the ISP is to blame and it usually fixes itself, sooner rather than later.
 
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