Comments on: Gmail IMAP Problems on Snow Leopard

By: Nonie

Nonie — Sat, 22 May 2010 22:59:21 +0000

I’m having the problem with mail timing out before getting any new mail from gmail servers also. It will send, but not recieve. I deleted the account, set it again, and it worked until I did a manual sync – I also run an iphone and a mac laptop. Then it went down. The problem is this: when you use snow leopard mail on several computers or devices they send too much data when they try to get your mail or sync if they do it simultaneously and google thus locks you out, since their server is set to lock out any over activity on the account. Apparently mail uses several lines to connect to servers, so even two can overload it. That would explain why only some users experience it. And why it’s only related to snow leopard. Unless google or mail fix it, I’m using Thunderbird. Seems to me Mac is getting sloppier and sloppier all the time with their operating systems. Thunderbird lets you encrypt, too, I hear. If anyone comes up with a fix for this, that would be helpful, too.

By: JoeyW

JoeyW — Thu, 13 May 2010 05:30:41 +0000

The above info from Robert was a great start, but also found the below info to be a great help…

I found the problem identified here (http://getsatisfaction.com/google/topics/getting_error_message_account_exceeded_bandwidth_limits) and then the solution to the recovered mail folder here (http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/gmail/thread?tid=4395706bba19fb05&hl=en)

Good Luck!!

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:15:08 +0000

I was struggling with the same situation recently and tried all possible solutions available on other forums but nothing worked. I tried to find the cause of it on my own and this worked in my case:

Close mail.app and go to folder /Users/your_user_name/Library/Mail/IMAP-account_affected/

delete hidden folder ‘.OfflineCache’ and restart mail.app. Hopefully, someone will find it useful.

By: Sophie

Sophie — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 04:24:21 +0000

Thanks for this post and all the comments. I had the same problem with an 1and1 account. Ended up removing the account from Mail and reinstalling it. Seems to have worked. For now. Thanks!

By: nean

nean — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 20:26:20 +0000

hi guys,

well exactly the same issue and same behaviour comes up on zimbra 6.x in conjunction mail.app.

this is some kind of IMAP problem and it seems mail.app has a problem with the imap daemon which is used by zimbra and gmail.

actually i found out that this does not happen with thunderbird.

you should get rid of the attachement which causes the problem and cleanup the mail.app mailbox, but you need some unix experience for this.

because of imap, you could simply delete your mailaccount in mail.app and also delete everything in /Users//Library/Mail and setup it again – after that all your maildata will synced up again with gmail,…

cheers

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 09:44:26 +0000

Macbook Pro, Snow Leopard, Gmail IMAP settings, nothing changed since setting up the account in Mail. All was well until a few days ago. Now messages won’t send. A window keeps popping up asking for the User/Pass. Would it be possible to change to the ISP SMTP or does the set up require the Gmail SMTP?

Thanks

By: Dmitri

Dmitri — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:37:42 +0000

Yep… I’ve got the same problem as Karen… SMTP works fine, so I can send e-mails, but I can’t get any e-mail by IMAP.

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:47:57 +0000

I had already disabled store draft messages on server so I disabled store sent messages on server and restarted mail and nothing. Still hanging.

Current activity:

[Gmail] Fetching new mail – copying message – empty bar

[Gmail] Sychronizing with – Traversing mailbox hierarchy – zebra bars

[Gmail] Communicating – adding messages – zebra bars

I suspect I have to remove and add the account again to fix this but I am unconvinced it won’t happen again since I had already disabled store drafts on server before I sent the email with the large attachment. Since it keeps popping up in recovered messages, I had assumed it got stuck somewhere before it was designated “sent” but it doesn’t make sense because it has been copied into my ‘sent messages” folder on the server.

Is anyone else having issues sending large attachments? It was about 18mgs. I work in media so I am always going to have to send large attachments… wondering if I am going to have to do that through the web browser only. Very frustrating.

By: Brendan

Brendan — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:33:19 +0000

There shouldn’t be that many active processes after the initial import.. Something like the large message is blocking it up.

Open your account from Mail’s preferences, click Mailbox Behaviours and uncheck Drafts and Sent (Gmail will make its own copy of sent messages anyway). Then restart Mail and see what happens.

By: Karen

Karen — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:00:47 +0000

Yes, I did change that setting to “all messages, but omit attachments” and I have about 4900 emails in my gmail inbox and 3980 in my sent mail (imap). Since I removed and then re-added the account, I only have 79 messages in my local sent mail. All that said, I believe that all of my gmail downloaded properly before this happened. The problem started after I sent an email with a large attachment which appears to send fine but gets stuck in the recovered messages folder. The same thing happened the first time.

The current activity is:

[Gmail] Sychronizing with – Updating offline disk cache – solid blue bar but hanging

Copying messages – Updating offline disk cache – empty bar and hanging

[Gmail] Sychronizing to – Copying message – empty bar and hanging

[Gmail] Fetching new mail – Fetching new mail – zebra bars

[Gmail] Communicating – Adding messages – zebra bars

[Sent mail - Gmail ] – Opening mailbox – zebra bars

Sent – Gmail] Opening – Opening mailbox – zebra bars

Any thoughts?