In recent weeks, I’ve developed a terrible email problem. Emails written from my M2 MacBook Air with latest Sonoma. Almost all don’t get delivered.; sometimes I’m notified, sometimes not. BUT, email works fine on my iPhone. Obviously, it’s the same ISP, and as far as I can tell all the settings are the same too. I’ve tried everything I know, but can’t fix it. Can anybody help?
I’d start by sending test email messages from both the iPhone and the Mac to known accounts you can check, such as yourself at the same ISP address and yourself at an iCloud or (preferably and) Gmail address. If those come through, you can check the headers to see how they traveled.
Of course, it’s worth asking support at your ISP too.
1 Like
What is the error message (or reason for the bounce) you receive when you are notified that the email is not deliverable?
2 Likes
Honestly, I’d just delete the account and set it back up again, particularly if it is IMAP or Exchange and your stored mail is on the mail server. Then see if if the problem recurs.
I think deleting the account and setting it up again is a bit overkill and may not even resolve the issue.
If the OP posts an example from one of the bounces that includes the specific reason for the bounce, it may be a simple fix, or at least be able to rule out certain other things.
It may not resolve the issue, but if it does it’s a 5 minute fix rather than spending time poring over error messages (when they’re received - it sounds like they don’t always get received) when it could just be a bad configuration that might be resolved by setting the account up again. And it doesn’t then you can spend more time trying to find the issue.
Is there any correlation between the receivers that are having problems and them having gmail addresses? It’s not uncommon for me to sometimes have gmail problems like this.
Done all of that, no help.
Many different mail addresses, not just Gmail.
Could there be something in your outgoing that triggers spam filters or something designed to block fraud? For example, GMail repeatedly routed a legitimate contract send to me DocuSign directly to its Trash folder, so I saw it until I happened to search the Trash.
Do emails from the iPhone work when it is connected (i.e. Wi-Fi) to the same network as the MacBook Air? That is, is there a difference between cellular vs. your home network?
How that could make a difference would be the question. But one simple answer is your ISP could be giving you an IP address that used to belong to a spammer.
If messages from the iPhone over the same network work, then it has to be a configuration difference. Or a bug in Sonoma.
Some things that affect outgoing email:
- Server settings: Mail > Settings > Accounts > Server Settings > Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP ) > Account > Edit SMTP Server List > select row for server, then you get to set the user name, password, host, and authentication
- Email address you’re sending from
- DNS caches
- IP address for reason given above
- Whether you’re running your own SMTP server or not. ISPs will block messages coming from residential IP addresses; they want the traffic to be you > ISP’s SMTP > them. This is because you know who likes to run their own SMTP server? Spammers.
A different email problem…
After updating to iOS 18 my partner’s iPad no longer automatically fills in the From field. Updating to 18.1 made no difference. She has to manually go to that field and select her email from a list of one.
My ipad (18.01) works as expected and there doesn’t seem to be a difference in settings. Same for her iPhone.
My ISP has been entirely unhelpful, they haven’t even replied to my request for help.
Based on all your replies, it seems like I’ll have to reinstall my email account. Experienced as I am with Apples and Macs, I’ve never done anything like that before, and I’m afraid of really screwing things up, worst of all, losing all my emails in all my mailboxes (I have many and many filters). So please bear with me, I’ll need some handholding. I believe it’s important for you to know that my ISP is my local email provider, so my email is xxxxxxx@chello.at.
Do I delete the email account, or simply reconfigure it, which might be the same?
I imagine I do the above on my Mac. Will that automatically do the same thing on my iPhone, or do I do that separately as an extra step?
Afraid as I am of losing all my mails, is there some way to back it all up before I start? While I have iCloud, I don’t use it and there’s no mail stored there. Nor are my emails stored on my ISP’s mail.
Best, GB
If your email is not stored at chello.at servers as you say, you are probably be using the old POP (Post Office Protocol) method to access it.
In that case, deleting the account from one of your devices will delete the copy of the email on that device, and it will not be able to load a fresh copy from the servers. If you do it on all of your devices, you will lose all copies of your mail.
How can I remedy that? I also have two Time Machine back ups +2 clones, all up to date, one of which is bootable. Will that help in case of catastrophe?