Problems downloading e-mails

20 Mar 2008 21:15:55

David Fleetwood

We are having difficulties downloading e-mails on our G5 iMac, running 10.5.2 and using Mail. The problem is intermittent and only affects my wife's user a/c - so I am in trouble for not sorting it!
When it happens, the Mail app. tries to download e-mails but nothing is received. The account is set up properly in Mail. On my own user a/c everything is working fine - even more trouble for me! The ISP (Waitrose) have not come up with anything wrong their end. My wife can read the messages on their website but prefers to download them to our computer. I tried setting up another user account but this still seemed to be afflicted by the same problem. We have also noticed that it is associated with there being attachments to e-mails. No attachments and they download fine and once we delete attachments on the web mail they then download with no problem.
Does anyone have any thoughts on what may be going wrong?

Re: Problems downloading e-mails

20 Mar 2008 23:39:52

Terry Willis

Sounds an odd problem..!

It also sounds account specific. Many ISPs who provide webmail require you to indicate somewhere, within the webmail preferences, that you want to use an email client. This is usually by ticking a check box, which then allows remote access.

Some also offer the option to use either POP3 or IMAP, which again may have additional settings, like "don't download emails with attachments" or perhaps messages over a certain size.

I would suggest the first step would be to check the preference settings on your webmail to see if that solves the problem. Post back if you draw a blank.

Re: Problems downloading e-mails

21 Mar 2008 07:39:20

Mick Burrell

In Mail Preferences, under Accounts and the Advanced tab, there is a box for you to set a size limit above which it should prompt you to skip that message. Nothing set in there is there?

Re: Problems downloading e-mails

27 Mar 2008 20:23:34

David Fleetwood

Thanks to Terry and Mick for their thoughts but unfortunately following up on the suggestions hasn't resolved the problem. The ISP settings don't seem to enable me to have the option of selectively downloading e-mails. There is also nothing in the Mail Prefs Advanced tab relating to setting a size limit.
We have noticed in the Mail Activity window that it will show 'downloading x of x messages' and then usually nothing appears in the inbox. The number of alleged messages is often very high as though it is trying to download everything on the mail server, don't know if this gives a clue as to what is happening?

Re: Problems downloading e-mails

27 Mar 2008 21:51:43

Mick Burrell

David - do you have anything that can look to see what is on the server waiting? PopMonitor for example? If not, how about trying another mail client (Thunderbird?) to see if that will download?

Re: Problems downloading e-mails

21 Apr 2008 22:03:09

Glenn Wellstead

Hi David, just one question.. You say your emails download okay. Does that include emails with attachments?

The only reason I ask is that the father in law has an orange broadband that offers Webmail. He is fine to download email to pc that has no attachment but as soon as a picture is attached he can only see the email online.

Best wish's Glenn

Re: Problems downloading e-mails

27 Apr 2008 22:49:00

David Fleetwood

Hi Glenn
Yes, our problem seems to stem from the attachments. If there are any emails with attachments the whole lot will not download to our iMac but can be read online. If we clear the attachments then they download!! This strange behaviour only affects my wife's user a/c - mine are fine so we think it is a problem our end but still cannot resolve it. Everything used to work ok and we don't know what triggered the change. It is annoying more than anything
thanks for your interest
David