How to fix when Apple Mail fails to display new Exchange Imap e-mail messages

emailexchangeimapmail.app

In our case the Apple Mail client stops retrieving new incoming e-mail messages. Rebuilding the mailbox doesn't improve.

After looking at the "Mail Connection Assistent" a.k.a. "Mail Connection Doctor" both Exchange IMAP accounts have errors and display red.

How to fix this?

Best Answer

Have a look at the Microsoft Exchange Server.

First verify that the "Microsoft Exchange IMAP4" service is started.
Secondly verify that the Exchange IMAP virtual server is running. Therefore start the Exchange System Manager application, and open the path "Administrative Groups" > "First Administrative Group" > "Servers" > Server > Protocols > IMAP4.

In our case the "Default IMAP4 Virtual Server" repeatedly stopped itself.

After starting the "Default IMAP4 Virtual Server", the new mail started arriving in the Mail.app application.

Related Solutions

IPad Mail client – IMAP with X.509 client certificates

The question appears to be specific to using X.509 for authentication to an IMAP service, which isn't supported by iOS. S/MIME email encryption and signatures can be performed on iOS, but the authentication to mail services will still use username/password over SSL or TLS.

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.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

IPad Mail client – IMAP with X.509 client certificates

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

Related Question