Sent mail sitting indefinitely in outbox

There are a few reported problems with Apple's Mail program that are affecting users, one of these being that mail cannot be sent. In some instances the program will display authentication or connection problems, but in other cases the outgoing mail will just hang and not send.

Apple Discussions poster mpm000 writes:

"I am trying to send out email and now every time I do it is automatically going straight to the outbox and remains there indefinitely. I have checked the connections and everything is fine."

While it is always recommended to double-check outgoing server and troubleshoot firewall settings, this problem might be related to the outgoing server description settings. In Mail, the outgoing servers can be given a description, which in many cases ends up being the email address of the account that uses the specific server. It may be that using emails or specific characters in these descriptor fields are causing conflicts, but regardless, users have been able to solve this problem by clearing the contents of the descriptor field.

Fix: Delete contents of the SMTP server "descriptor" field In Mail, go to the application preferences and select "Accounts". From the list to the right, select any account and from the "Outgoing Mail Server" menu select "Edit Server List". In the list, select any outgoing server that has a contents in the "Description" area, and delete the contents in the description field. Then click "Ok" and close the preferences, saving changes. Email should now send properly.

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