Mail will not retrieve emails from one account

[jchuzi]

In Mail, I have one account for myself and one for my wife. Mine is working normally but hers can send email but not retrieve them. If she signs into her webmail account at Spectrum, she can see her emails from there.

I have tried the following:

1. Her account initially was offline so I put it online.
2. I toggled the account offline and then online.
3. I rebuilt her mailbox.
4. I used Disk Utility to run First Aid.
5. I quit Mail and relaunched it.
6. Restarting did not solve it.
7. At first, Outlook could not retrieve her mail either. I reset the password and Outlook succeeded in downloading her email.
8. I re-applied the Combo 10.15.6 update.
9. A phone call to Spectrum was non-productive. The rep told me that, since webmail was working, I would have to contact Apple.
10. There is a warning triangle at her mailbox. When I click it, I get the following:

Online Status

There may be a problem with the mail server or network. Verify the settings for account “cchuzi RR” or try again.

The server returned the error: Connections to host POP-server.hvc.rr.com on the default ports failed.

Please advise.

EDIT: Apple had me delete my wife's account and set it up again. Now, I can download her emails but she lost all her previous emails. Time Machine does not respond when I want to go back to this morning to restore the emails. I am currently running First Aid on Time Machine. Unfortunately, I got cut off from Apple and am trying to re-establish contact.

If I need to restore her emails, which file do I look for in either a clone or Time Machine?

[jchuzi]

The old account was POP, not IMAP. Therefore, there is no chance that the emails are still on Spectrum servers. I talked with three Apple techs and here's the long and short of it:

The first tech suggested that I delete the problem account and set up a new one. That solved the receiving issue but, unfortunately, she lost ALL her emails. I should have kept that account instead of deleting it. The new account downloads from a POP server but Mail lists it as IMAP. I want to delete the emails from the server as I download them, from Mail, not from Spectrum Webmail. How do I do that?

The second tech (the phone connection disconnected and I had to call again) passed me on to a higher level tech in order to figure out how to get her emails back. Without going into details, Time Machine was unsuccessful. I had a clone that was last updated on July 22 so I figured that I could, at least, retrieve emails from that date. Under the direction of the tech, I used Mail > File > Import Mailboxes to import ~/Library/Mail/V7. This resulted in imported mailboxes. I was able to move the emails from them into my wife's new mailbox.

Now, I have a new issue. I prefer Column view in Mail and I always have the emails spaced above the preview pane. In order to move as many emails as possible at one time, I lowered the space bar so that the preview pane was minimized (actually, not visible). Now, I cannot raise it again. Luckily, I can still double-click an email to open it and view it, but this is less convenient. If I uncheck Column view, I cannot get the side preview pane either, even by checking that option under View.

Any thoughts?

EDIT: At least there is some good news. I checked Spectrum Webmail and, to my surprise, all the old emails are there. This, despite it being a POP account. Go figure.

[Xairbusdriver]

Sorry I can't help. Sometimes it seems to just be too much "majic"!

I want to delete the emails from the server as I download them, from Mail, not from Spectrum Webmail. How do I do that?

I wish my wife's "POP" account would just work like that. As it is now, I have to visit her account via a browser and delete her messages from months ago. She has refused to stop using that old (EarthLink) Mindspring account for years. It claims to be a POP method but they refuse to delete anything since they also want you to pay for storage; don't delete and folks will "need" more storage! $$$

I lowered the space bar so that the preview pane was minimized (actually, not visible). Now, I cannot raise it again.

There's always (hopefully) the quit Mail and move/rename the plist file... MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ALL THE ACCOUNT SETTINGS  PASSWORDS COPIED INTO A PLAIN TEXT FILE (or a series of screen shots)!!! You might even find it in a cloned backup (or even TM).

[jchuzi]

All the Mail plists had been modified quite some time ago, so none are current (as far as I can see). It looks like another phone call to Apple is in order.

[jchuzi]

I just got off the phone with Apple and my problem is solved. In Column view, I selected an email and then moved the cursor to the bottom of the window until it changed to the appropriate shape. Then, I moved the cursor up until it got to the selected email. The Preview pane automagically appeared! It seems that the cause of the issue was hiding that pane entirely. As to the IMAP issue, I'll probably have to take that up with Spectrum.