How to change mail server for an IMAP account in OSX 10.11 when mail server greyed out

emailimapmail.app

I need to change the mail server for a IMAP account in OSX.

But the mail server field is greyed out (see below screenshot). Ideally i dont want to have to setup the account new from scratch a re download all the emails from the server.

Is there a way i can edit the mail server field of an existing IMAP account ?

Best Answer

I found the answer after some searching via HERE

Select the Advanced Tab, uncheck the box to “Automatically detect and maintain account settings”, save change.
Go back into Preferences > Accounts, update the Incoming Mail Server to: mail.comporium.net

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MacOS – How to set up OS X Server Mail to auto-configure Mac Mail IMAP clients

I did a little digging and found out a little of what OSX tries to do to auto-configure an email account.

In system preferences when adding a mail account, OSX makes a POST to https://mac-services.apple.com/iconfig/dconf the post parameters are:

domain: EMAIL_DOMAIN_THE_USER_ENTERED.com
version: 1
capabilities: MACOSX

For a service like gmail the following is returned:

<domain>
  <name>gmail.com</name>
  <description>Gmail</description>
  <service>
    <hostname>imap.gmail.com</hostname>
    <port>993</port>
    <protocol>IMAP</protocol>
    <ssl/>
    <requires>MACOSX</requires>
    <authentication>PLAIN</authentication>
  </service>
  <service>
    <hostname>smtp.gmail.com</hostname>
    <port>587</port>
    <protocol>SMTP</protocol>
    <ssl/>
    <requires>MACOSX</requires>
    <authentication>PLAIN</authentication>
    <usernameIncludesDomain/>
  </service>
</domain>

Unfortunately, for my domain I receive the following response:

<domain>
  <name>EMAIL_DOMAIN_THE_USER_ENTERED.com</name>
  <unknown/>
</domain>

As far as I can tell after an unknown response OSX gives up and requires a user to enter the details manually. Capturing network packets I see no attempt by OSX to fallback to using SRV DNS records, or the Exchange Autodiscover.xml mechanism.

If I get a chance I will open a support ticket with apple to see how one gets added to their mac-services list.

Inbox empty using OS X Mail with outlook.com account (IMAP)

I've faced the same problem trying to set up my wife's Hotmail account in Mail.app. After much fiddling I eventually gave up and used POP3 instead.

About the only suggestion out there that I didn't try was trimming down the inbox (she had, I believe, 3k+ emails in her inbox), since some people reported solving the problem by getting their inboxes down to, say, 100 emails or so. I didn't even bother trying that solution since it seems so fragile -- what happens when she receives new email above the magic threshold that breaks IMAP? Is it just going to break again?

Much as it pains me to say this, it appears POP3 is the way to go for Hotmail/outlook.com/etc. accounts. IMAP appears to be simply broken.

Best Answer

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Inbox empty using OS X Mail with outlook.com account (IMAP)

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