When it works correctly, email can feel seamless. But a failure reveals its two separate components: one kind of server handles your mail app’s retrieval of messages; another sends them out. These distinct components might reside on physically different hardware at your internet service provider or the company hosting your email account, such as Apple, Google, or Microsoft.
It’s rare once you’ve set up an email account that you have more than intermittent errors in downloading messages. Those are generally due only to communications issues at the mail-hosting company. In my experience, and that of Macworld readers, it’s much more common that the outgoing mail server requires troubleshooting.
Apple’s Mail app for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS reveals errors that occur when a connection to an incoming or outgoing mail server can’t be made. For instance, you might see an error in iOS that reads, “The connection to the outgoing server ‘server name’ failed. Additional Outgoing Mail Servers can be
