I can email my brother several states away, but when I try to email this one person locally, the library where she works, I keep getting an error message from ATT about "cannot use this outbound.att.net" SMPT server. I don't see how geography should have anything to do with this. Mail's Connection Doctor tells me everything is working fine.

It happened last week too, but after trying throughout the day, the rejected local email finally went through.

You are seeing AT&T's problem and has absolutely nothing to do with the Mail client or your Apple device. Problems like this may occur with any email provider or ISP leaving you to wait until the provider fixes the problem. Last week there was a period when my primary email account refused to accept messages with attachments. That is whyI have an alternate email account from an entirely different provider I use when something like that occurs. It probably happens on the incoming (POP or IMAP) side as well, but in that case generally the only thing I see is a paucity of incoming traffic on the account.

if you are using the same email provider as your recipient, (which may not be obvious if they are using a different domain name) then the address list is verified immediately as you are sending the message. It does not "bounce" in the traditional way, it is rejected for sending in the first place by your smtp server.

I ran into this problem several times with people managing mailing lists. They'd enter a group name in TO which would auto populate all the email addresses of group members. If ANY of them was an invalid LOCAL address (like "judy@abc.com" as an email address) the entire send would fail immediately with an error message because you are using the abc mailserver and it already knows that the address is invalid because there is no such user "Judy" there".

So it may have nothing to do with physical proximity, but more of network proximity. Make sure you are not using an email alias and are correctly formatting the address. The mailserver may be more tolerant of changes (like case sensitivity, embedded or trailing spaces getting stripped etc) where as your local SMTP server isn't as tolerant.

Very interesting. Thanks for the replies.

joe: Do you have a separate email acct. from a provider like ATT that you access with Mail? Or do you have a separate web acct. like Gmail that you acess with Firefox? (or whatever services and programs you use)

The reason I ask is I used to have both, my ATT email and web mail. That was so I could use my ATT for personal correspondence, such as it is, and my web mail acct for purchases. After years of using it, I worried that my web mail service wasn't secure, and it wasn't all that great anyway, so now I use my ATT acct for everything. In the past I was reluctant to do that because of privacy and security and perhaps ease of use.

I've read about those subjects a lot during recent months. It seems there isn't much privacy and security anyway, so I'm not sure my choices matter.

Still, if I found a free, secure, easy web mail service that I liked, I would be tempted to use it for a second email address again. But I spent many hours, weeks, months over the years looking for such a service, without success.

ATT has been reliable for me nearly all the time. The guys who come to the house have been top notch. Customer service less so. ATT retail stores have been a bad experience.

I have an iCloud (.mac.com) account, a Gmail account, and a private email account from my web site and I access all of them with Mail or Airmail. All three accounts have a webmail portal but the only time I ever use one of them is when I am troubleshooting a problem.

Personally I have found the AT&T Technicians to be first class and very knowledgeable. While I live not far from the AT&T headquarters I have found their service to be mediocre at best.

Thanks.

How do you read gmail without going to gmail.com? And do you consider gmail safe? Relatively speaking.

If one forwards incoming Gmail to another account (having set it up in advance), then one can read such in the latter.
Gmail is relatively safe since it requires https encryption (which is at least 128 bit).

The Mail app in OS X or iOS will automatically configure a Gmail account as IMAP. No forwarding or any other work around is needed and you don't want or need unnecessary complications.

1. In OS X…
   1. Open Mail > Preferences > Accounts
   2. Click on the plus sign (+) at the bottom of the list of accounts
   3. From the list of account types choose Google
   4. Enter your Gmail email address (the full address including gmail.com or whatever, and the password for the account
   5. Click on "Sign in"
   6. From that point on your Gmail will appear in OS X Mail in the same way any other account will
2. In iOS…
   1. Navigate to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars
   2. Touch Add Account at the bottom of the list of accounts
   3. Touch Google
   4. Enter your Gmail email address (the full address including gmail.com or whatever, and the password for the account
   5. Touch "Sign in"
   6. From that point on your Gmail will appear in iOS Mail in the same way any other account will

Thanks.

I created a gmail account but when I tried to create a new acct in Mail, I got the message "Logging in to the Gmail IMAP server “imap.gmail.com” failed."

That generally means you have an error either in the email address or in the password. In case you may have forgotten the password you can get it by

1. On your Mac, open Keychain Access
2. Search for Accounts.google.com
3. select it
4. the correct email account name should be shown in parenthesis so verify you are using the correct account name.
5. click on Copy at the bottom of the Keychain [Access Window
6. Enter your administrative account password on the Mac
7. put the pointer in the password field for the Google account in Mail and Press ⌘v to paste the password in place.

To get the password for use on your iOS device

1. Follow steps 1 through 4 preceding
2. Click on the Info icon ℹ️ at the bottom of the window
3. Click the Show Password check box
4. Enter your administrative account password on the Mac
5. enter the password in the proper field on your iOS device. (Be VERY careful and remember this is case sensitive.

This was my fault. I entered the wrong address.

Good to hear you got it figured out.

For future reference, the NUMBER ONE thing to check when you are having a problem setting up an email account: go to your email provider's web site and log into their webmail.

If you can't get logged in there, don't waste your time trying to get Mail set up.

Also bonus: gmail can require device verification now for mobile devices. So you will get a prompt when you login at gmail saying you tried to login with a device. You can tell google to whitelist that device, and then it will start working without any changes.

I feel like an idiot.

...pretty much a prerequisite for becoming a regular here!

Just like the rest of us.....

OMG, I sincerely hope no one is keeping score. If that were the case pretty much everyone here would have to use as their icon.

I think I'd just go with the classic Picard Facepalm