Catalina and Mail

DaveS

Well-Known Member
I expect there aren't very many members using Catalina yet, but I have a couple questions. One concerns Mail. The other I'll save for now. I have two mail accounts, one with Telus and one with Apple. They always worked independently and I could use either from either phone or Mac. Nothing has changed with my iPhone, but now I can't seem to send a message from the Apple account using the MacBook Air. Also when sending from the MacBook Air and using the Telus account it takes about a minute for the message to finish going--at least for the swoosh to happen. Comments?

Dave Squance
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
Since I haven't yet upgraded to Catalina, my comments are worth about zilch, but from what I have read, Catalina has presented some problems with Mail for some users. I trust you have done all the supplemental updates to Catalina (I think there were two) so if you haven't checked you might see if there is still an update to do there. Otherwise perhaps just hope 10.15.1 fixes your issue.

And as for Telus mail, telus.com/outages still reports the issue that started on Aug. 15 hasn't been completely cleared up for some users. Of course they seem to have even given up on updating that page as the last update was Oct. 4

Dave Teece
 

DaveS

Well-Known Member
Thanks, Dave. I hadn't done any updates, but when I go to System updates I'm told there are no updates available. I figured Telus was still having problems.
Dave Squance
 

TimRichards

Well-Known Member
Not sure this is the best thread, but I had a boatload of problems with my mail with upgrade to Catalina. Lost about 1000 emails in several folders. Some ’came back’ with Apple Care, but many calls were required and each help call was clearly just ‘trying things’. But in the end I was able to access mail prior to 2017, stored on my old IMac. Otherwise I’d still be out all my older business email, which I treasure for my ability ( if required) to show due diligence. Has anyone else has a similar foo-foo?
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
I haven’t had any issues with Mail since going to Catalina, but I archive old email fairly religiously. Anything older than two years gets shuttled of to another drive (and, in truth, never gets opened again — but it’s there for the digital archeologists, I guess ...

It should be noted that I‘ve never used Shaw or Telus for email, and that I’m also religious about backups, so this really helps in case of any a cidenal data loss.
 

TimRichards

Well-Known Member
Some of the other oddities included mail that showed a header but when opened was blank; another time I deleted email in my inbox only to have it return two minutes later; literally while I was watching the inbox. And when I imported the old mail from the IMac it created duplicate copies with one mail working, that is, opening normally, and a matching header duplicate that did not have contents. I though I was good with three backups on hard drives ( two time machine plus a Carbon Copy Cloner version) , but for some reason as the faults developed they overwrote the good backups. Now I’ve had a religious conversion and am keeping (manually exporting) email on two alternate thumb drives as well as the backup drives.
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
I though I was good with three backups on hard drives ( two time machine plus a Carbon Copy Cloner version) , but for some reason as the faults developed they overwrote the good backups. Now I’ve had a religious conversion and am keeping (manually exporting) email on two alternate thumb drives as well as the backup drives.

One recommendation would be to avoid leaving all your backup drives connected at all times. At one time there was a concern that if "bad guys" got into your computer (via malware or whatever) and corrupted your hard drive they could also corrupt the connected external drives at the same time. I haven't heard that concern raised recently so perhaps the improvements to macOS security has removed that concern.

In my case I have the always connected Time Machine drive doing hourly backups but the drive I use for Carbon Copy Cloner backups remains disconnected and only gets connected while I am doing the infrequent full clone backups. These get done before any update to macOS and in a few cases where I am doing an update to an important application where I worry the updated version may not perform as well for me as the older version.
 

DaveS

Well-Known Member
I'm still having a lot of trouble with Mail. I didn't lose anything, but messages don't want to go. I often get this screen:Screen Shot 2020-01-30 at 9.00.49 PM.png
If I'm sending from my iCloud acct. (me.com ) Selecting the top line and pressing return usually works. A little while ago I tried to send a message to a group using the telus account and it wouldn't go at all. Didn't matter what line I picked. Why those are showing "offline" I have no idea. My account setup looks like this:
Screen Shot 2020-01-30 at 8.45.36 PM.png
The iCloud account only show a little box with iCloud in it. Any suggestions?
 

DaveWT

Well-Known Member
Any suggestions?

Yes, but you won't like it. I was having the exact same sort of behaviour long before Catalina at the time that Telus was having its many month outage. At that time, I decided to ditch Telus for email and switched completely to my iCloud mail account. It was a ton of work to notify everyone, move mail from my telus account to mailboxes in Mail on my Mac and then stop using Telus Mail. At that time, I then deleted my Telus email accounts (3 of them) from my Mail app and that got rid of all the conflicting Telus SMTP server choices for outgoing mail.

Now my use of the Mail app on my Mac (and now on Catalina as well) is completely stable. Before Telus stops offering email at all, perhaps this is the time to leave them.

Dave
 

chas_m

Well-Known Member
I would start by editing your SMTP servers list to have exactly two entries: smtp.telus.net and iCloud.

Telus continues to have some issues with its email service, so it could be that it’s not on your end wrt that account, but it wouldn’t hurt to look up Telus’s official settings for SMTP and make sure yours matches exactly.
 

DaveS

Well-Known Member
Thanks for the replies. I will start the process of switching over to just using my Apple account, but in the meantime try to act on Chas' suggestions.
 
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