An Often-Overlooked Feature of Mail.app - Connection Doctor
From time to time, for a plethora of reasons - we may lose connection with Mail. No, that sentence was not just an excuse to use the word plethora. Your Mail settings may have changed, you could be having issues with your ISP, but regardless of the issue - Mail troubles can be confusing and frustrating. But there’s help!
Under the Window menu in Mail, is a little tool called Connection Doctor. This feature arrived with Mac OS 10.4 “Tiger” , and was designed to diagnose and fix networking issues directly from Mail.
What it does exactly is kind of cool. First, it tests your connection to the internet (at the top of the Connection Doctor window). If you do not have access to the internet, you can click “Assist Me”, and open Network Diagnostics to troubleshoot your connection. Network Diagnostics will ask a series of questions in order to isolate your connection issue to a specific catalyst.
Mail’s Connection Doctor also tests connection from your incoming and outgoing mail servers. It is very smart! The error message you get will give you a very accurate clue to what is not configured correctly. Once you fix it, and hit “Check Again”, it re-examines your connection and updates you on the status. It takes the confusion out of connection, and makes troubleshooting Mail a breeze!
For more information on using Mail’s Connection Doctor:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mail/2.0/en/ml1098.h
