Mail.app keeps taking accounts offline

I have a few email accounts setup within Mail. Lately, Mail indicates that the accounts are all offline, with the error "Unable to Receive Mail. There may be a problem with the mail server or network."

Settings for all my email accounts are fine. Passwords are fine. The only thing that isn't fine, apparently, is Mail.

Clicking on "Take all accounts online" does nothing. The only thing that does work is quitting Mail and restarting the application - only to have the issue repeat itself some hours later.

What do you think the issue is and how can I fix it?

I can't work it out either. The best result I had was when I contacted my ISP (Optus) and they got me to change a few things. However that was a couple of years ago and I can't remember what the changes were :-)

Is it upon waking up? If WiFi doesn't connect quick enough when waking up I have trouble and it just keeps asking for my password, quit and reopen fixes it, though it sounds like you have a different issue.

Yes, it would be on waking up, so maybe something to do with the wifi. But I do not get prompted for a password - the ! triangle just sits alongside each of the inboxes.

I've got a bigpond account, I can receive no worries but mail dosen't seem to like communicating with the Outgoing mail server. Mine just stopped working about 2 weeks ago. Wife was able to use the ipad up until now. I've tried removing and setting up new accounts. WTF

Yes I've done the deleting and re-setting up of accounts, too. But the same thing keeps happening, unfortunately.

Telstra seem to think its a mac issue, not a server issue. Their solution was to reformat the computer.... but i'm not quite that desperate yet!

Its a Mac issue, we are seeing it as well, doesn't matter if its exchange, gmail or the local ISP, all are doing it and gmail keeps asking my wife on her gmail account to put the password in for teh smtp.

I've got my ISP, icloud and gmail and they're all doing it too.

I'm also having some weird problems with the Mail.app which have only started when I upgraded to Mountain Lion so I assumed it had something to do with the upgrade. In my situation Mail becomes totally unresponsive - it just stops working and stops Safari working as well but oddly not Excel??. In fact I cannot quit Mail, even doing a force quit doesn't close it properly. The only solution is to restart. I once got the "do you want to report this problem" window which I duly did, but that was nearly 2 weeks ago and never did get any reply.

I'm curious as to whether it is a Mail.app bug or just my setup. I suspect the problem is something to do with running out of memory but that is just a guess.

Not sure what version OSX the OP is using but i seem to have the same kind of issue since installing 10.8.

Also noticed that short emails seem to type fine but as soon as you get over 50 words it seems to get laggy to the point of you can type whole sentences, wait a few seconds and then it will add them super fast.

Its not limiting my usage just annoying, heres hoping they fix these bugs and release 10.8.1 soon.

Hmmm after playing around with Mail all morning i have noticed that this could be an issue with the Auto Save and iCloud.

Once it gets over a particular word count it seems to be autosaving all the time, syncing with iCloud and then continuing.
This never used to be an issue with 10.7...wonder if anyone has a work around for this?

Sorry - yes, I'm running Mountain Lion and agree this only seems to have begun occurring after installing it.

For those of you who find restarting Mail.app gets the connection back up: what router/gateway are you using and roughly how long after you start Mail.app does the connection drop?

What do you mean by router/gateway?

The length of time before it drops can vary. For instance, I deleted my accounts in Mail last night, then re-added them, found that all was still working when I woke up in the morning and that all was still ok when I reached home after work. But now, having been out of the house for a few hours, they've all dropped. On other occasions, it's been a matter of hours.

Looks like 10.8.1 may have cleared up a few of these mail issues.

Ok. Good to know. I installed the update this morning, so will see if things settle down when I reach home in the evening.

I completed the mac update last night only to wake up this morning and find it did not resolve anything.

mail.app still shows all accounts as offline. I have imap and pop3 account. i have deleted and configured all accounts but still does not resolve the issue. this also all started with the mountain lion update.

i really hope there is a quick simple fix for this, i honestly dont feel like format and reload. :ambivalent:

Hi Teej, roughly 3-8 hrs.

No dice for me, either. Still an issue even after the 10.8.1 update.

No suggestions from the MTAU brains trust? :nerd: