![\"mailcantconnect\"](\"https:\/\/www.macsrwe.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/mailcantconnect.png\")
<\/p>\nThis bug\u00a0really burns\u00a0me, because it’s been around forever, and Apple just isn’t doing anything about\u00a0it.<\/p>\n
Anyone who has used Apple Mail for more than a week has seen the following dialog box:<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Of course, the natural response is to obey\u00a0and type your password.<\/p>\n
Don’t do it.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Here’s why:<\/p>\n There are a half-dozen or so reasons why a mail transaction will fail. The mail server may be busy, hung, or dead. Your Wi-Fi may be down or your ethernet cable may be loose. There could be a network interruption in the greater internet somewhere between you and your mail server. Or, you could actually have supplied the wrong password for the account.<\/p>\n Unless your mail account is brand new, or you recently changed your mail password,\u00a0the probability that this last choice\u00a0is really your problem\u00a0is vanishingly\u00a0small.<\/p>\n However, that’s not Apple Mail’s opinion. “Couldn’t contact the server? Oh no, it has to be a bad\u00a0password!” So Mail puts up this dialog box, inveigling\u00a0you to type\u00a0in your password\u00a0again.<\/p>\n There is no upside to complying with this request.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n There are two probabilities\u00a0here that absolutely dwarf all others: you will type in your password correctly, which won’t solve anything because\u00a0your password was never\u00a0the\u00a0problem; or you will type in your password incorrectly, at which point you have now compounded your original problem by layering a worse one\u00a0on top of it.<\/p>\n The real joker in the woodpile here is that one of the biggest\u00a0reasons for typing\u00a0in your password incorrectly is because you have actually\u00a0forgotten your correct password. Now, a\u00a0lost mail password can be retrieved using Keychain Access on your Mac\u2026 unless of course you have just overwritten it with a bad<\/em>\u00a0password because you responded to this idiotic query from Mail.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude21<\/p>\n The good news is that if you avoid thrashing at this juncture, you can still recover. Mail stores the POP\/IMAP (incoming) account password separately from the SMTP (outgoing) account password, and in almost all cases known to man, they are the same password. Use Keychain Access to view the one you haven’t yet damaged, and beat this particular reaper.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This bug\u00a0really burns\u00a0me, because it’s been around forever, and Apple just isn’t doing anything about\u00a0it. Anyone who has used Apple Mail for more than a week has seen the following dialog box: Of course, the natural response is to obey\u00a0and type your password. Don’t do it.\u00a0 Here’s why: There are a half-dozen or so reasons … Continue reading Bad Apple Mail\u2014No Password!<\/span>