troubleshooting

[mayhap]

Apple Mail keeps rejecting my password even though it is correct. I know that it is correct, because it still works on my webmail, my iPhone and my iPad. I can even trick Apple Mail into accepting it sometimes by removing and then reinstating my IMAP account, whereupon it will totally work until Apple Mail realizes that I'm looking at my email and quickly starts demanding passwords again.

This has been going on for over a month now and my best guess is that it may have something to do with the absolutely phenomenal amount of old mail I'm presently hoarding in my old-messages mailbox; at least 20,000. However as I can't manage to obtain access to those emails long enough to test that hypothesis, I find myself at an impasse.

I don't like any of the other email clients I've tried, so I keep coming back to it and poking it again and it's still not working, and argh. So frustrating.

Comments

[qem_chibati]

I can help with troubleshooting if you want?

Have you tried deleting the keychain passwords? Sometimes an incorrect password can be stored there and not overwritten with the correct one.

[mayhap]

Whoops! I totally didn't mean to ignore your comment all this time; I just lose track of emails really easily when I'm only getting them on my phone and the stupid Russian spam isn't being filtered out. /o\

I had already tried to verify my keychain and that didn't help, and then I reset my entire keychain and that didn't help either, and then when I went just now to see if there were any rogue passwords to delete, I didn't see a password for the Mail application at all. Which is what made me think that maybe I should verify my entire disk, and that found major errors in my sector numbers that I had to boot from the recovery disk to repair, and since I booted back up it hasn't asked me for my password once! I think it may actually be fixed! *knocks on wood*

[qem_chibati]

No worries. I'm glad that it seems to be resolved now!

[coercedbynutmeg.livejournal.com]

Can you flush some old mail? I've been doing that, but not well enough.

[mayhap]

I finally managed to get it working again tonight! I had some kind of file system errors that I repaired, presumably located in the crucial "retrieve email without having a total meltdown" sector of my hard drive.

I have so many old messages that are, like coupon codes I saved in case I wanted to order something from that website before they expired five years ago. I should try to trash all that stuff so I don't lose any of the emails that I actually want to hoard.

[coercedbynutmeg.livejournal.com]

I have a bunch of those. Or "you paid this bill!" emails. Which is good to keep them for awhile, but like, if I've paid faithfully every month since 2006, I probably don't need to keep all 80 or so of those emails at this point.