Email Client Synchronization Problems

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InMotionFans
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We're seeing seemingly random messages and folders missing from our email clients (Mac Mail, Thunderbird on Mac and PC and Outlook). This started yesterday and despite InMotion restarting the mail service and mail queue on our VPS, the problem is still presenting itself this morning. If we use webmail to log into one of the accounts where we've seen these issues on the client side, it appears all messages are present, but sometimes several folders will be unsubscribed. How would a folder become unsubscribed without input from the user? I've also noticed that some (not all, strangely) of the message filters I've created in Thunderbird stopped working at the same time these other issues cropped up. We know all settings in clients are correct for SSL connections. We have tried quitting and restarting email clients. We have tried rebooting workstations with affected email clients. I've tried disabling the Avast for Business Mail Shield. None of the above have fixed the issue.

I have also personally seen a very strange issue with Thunderbird on the Mac with one specific folder for one account. It will say downloading X of 682 messages in [Folder Name} and X will continue to increase until it's over 2,000 of 682. While it's doing this, Thunderbird's Activity Manager will spit out repeated errors: "Server "[Name of Email Account in Thunderbird] has disconnected. The server may have gone down or there may be a network problem."

I don't know if these are all symptoms of one problem or if they're all separate issues. Has anyone else come across anything like this? If so, what was the solution that fixed the issue?

Sincerely,
A Thoroughly Baffled and Frustrated Graphic Design/IT Guy
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Arn
Hello Frustrated IT Guy, Sorry for the seemingly random email problems that you're having with the PCs and Macs on your network. The most frustrating thing to deal with is a problem that happens randomly and seemingly happens everywhere. I did search around in general IT forums, Apple Support and Mozilla support to see if I could find any similar reported issues. However, there were no common issues. Some people reported an issue of missing emails, but not in the way that you have described. I took a look at your account and did see that there is an open support ticket concerning the issue. If emails are working normally on webmail, it's difficult for us to troubleshoot an issue such as yours where the likely culprit has to do with client settings. Webmail uses IMAP. I would first suggest making sure that logins to your email accounts are all using a uniform protocol to login to the account. If there's a user with multiple logins to an email account where one is using POP3 and another is using IMAP, then yes, you may have issues with the emails being synchronized. Isolate a user - such as the Thunderbird client you are observing, then make sure they're using standard email settings. I would change from using STARTTLS if you see it being used to SSL/TLS if you are using the SSL settings (e.g. secure##.inmotionhosting.com or vps####.inmotionhosting.com) with port 993 for incoming and port 465 for outgoing email. Then, double-check the folder subscription. I have also noticed that the new Apple Mail clients do not always assign the folder to show the subscribed folders in the list. Check out the article on assigning the folders in Apple Mail. This isn't an issue normally seen in Thunderbird, but hopefully, at least you will be to standardize all of the settings an protocols so that everything is using one set of settings instead of possibly many different ones. The issue is also being investigated with our live support team (which is different from the Support Center team). Please follow up on the issue through the support ticket for updates or discussion of the problem. If you have any further questions or comments, please let us know. Regards, Arnel C.