Gmail outgoing server "offline" in Mac Mail?

[dmed]

I'm using Mac Mail 4.6 to send and receive through my gmail account. This seemed to be working just fine for several years now but I recently started getting feedback from mail recipients that my email is being tagged as not coming from my gmail account. When I checked it out I found that while the incoming gmail server setup is just fine, my outgoing gmail server is "offline". This forces Mac Mail to use sonic as my outgoing mail server, posing as a response from my gmail account, which in turn looks like spam to my recipients email programs.

Why is my gmail outgoing server "offline" and how can I set it up so that Mac Mail will use gmail for both incoming and outgoing mail?

Thanks,
David

[dane]

Maybe eliminate the Sonic.net mail server from your configuration, so it doesn't fail back to it when Gmail is unreachable?

[dmed]

I actually need them both. I use my Mac Mail to connect to several accounts for work and personal use. Sonic is my home and freelance account, Gmail is used for my primary work account. My problem is not that its defaulting to Sonic's mail servers, it's that it appears that Sonic may be blocking the use of Gmail as the outgoing mail server for the Gmail account? The Gmail outgoing server appears to be set up correctly but is permanently offline. Just looking for anyone who may have a similar set up to me (Sonic and Gmail on Mac Mail) and knows how to set up Gmail to use its own outgoing mail server.

[kgc]

Assuming that you are trying to connect to gmail's smtp server on port 587 and not port 25, there should be no blocking in place. Most of our dynamic access products have bi-directional port 25 blocking in place.

[dmed]

Ok, so it might be the port setting that's the issue. When I look at my settings I have 993 I think (not at home right now). I actually tried setting it to 587 yesterday but that seemed to brake the connection all together. I'll look again tonight.

[kgc]

Port 993 would be imaps - port 465 used to be used for ssmtp but isn't very commonly used.

[Maria]

I am having a similar problem.

I don think it's related to ports. My outgoing uses 465 and works fine, but incoming is set to 995 and stopped working about four days ago---driving me mad.

I use an intermediary server (university gmail client) and they haven't been able to help me. Their setup instructions for POP forwarding specifies Mac mail 4.0 and I'm running 4.6. Don't known I got from one to the other. If it was a recent auto-update, then maybe something's changed, but how do I find out what?

More questions than answers, but I feel your pain. Anyone more tech-savvy than me out there with any ideas would earn major komputer karmic points!

..../Maria in Toronto

[peregrin]

I started having this same exact problem about 6-7 days ago. I run gmail as well as hotmail through my Mac Mail program. It says that it is offline and is also driven me crazy, as my gmail address is not greeting sent out as .gmail, but as .hotmail.

[peregrin]

I started having this same exact problem about 6-7 days ago- 9/2 or so. I run gmail as well as hotmail through my Mac Mail program. Mac Mail says that mail.sonic..net is offline. I cannot send messages from Mac Mail via gmail, although recept of them seems fine. This is also driving me crazy, as my gmail address is not greeting sent out as as my gmail, but as my hotmail.
(on another note: My various hotmail accounts that I also run through MacMail also stopped collating messages into my Mac Mail......)