Error in Mail: "Connections to the server “p53-imap.mail.me.com” on the default ports timed out."

Hello Unaha-Closp,

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We'd like to gather some information to better understand this situation:

• Are you experiencing this behavior with a specific email account or multiple?
• Is this happening when doing something in particular? For example: Sending an email,  ..etc
• Does the issue persist if you turned off "Advanced Data Protection"?

If you're getting this error when you're trying to send an email, check this out:

If you can’t send or receive email on your Mac

We hope this information is useful. Kind regards.

I'm running Sonoma 14.2 on a brand new MacBook Pro and seeing the same error on one of my mail accounts from my ISP, who in turn uses Google email service. MacOS Mail connects to my Outlook and gmail accounts with no problem, but no go with connection to my ISP's mail (as I mentioned, also Google).

Odd thing is - neither Windows 11/Outlook for Windows on a VMware VM And Outlook Mac (Office 365) on my Mac have any trouble setting up this account.

Connection doctor shows for SMTP:

INITIATING CONNECTION Dec 19 15:24:40.074 host:smtp.telus.net -- port:0 -- socket:0x0 -- thread:0x6000007e6f80

and for IMAP (repeated 6 times over about 20 minutes):

INITIATING CONNECTION Dec 19 15:35:34.757 host:imap.telus.net -- port:0 -- socket:0x0 -- thread:0x600000770b80

Both attempted connections are to port 0, not the actual specified ports 465 and 993, and the setup of accounts does not offer much opportunity to tweak these settings.

Any thoughts ?

I am convinced this is a Mail bug. As I noted, two different implementations of Outlook have no trouble setting up the account. Today, just to test my theory, I installed the Thunderbird mail client - and it had no difficulty in setting up the account either. Thunderbird, in addition, also lets you see the detail of the accounts it sets up, and they match exactly the information provided by my ISP.

Apple Mail, as far as I can tell, unfortunately does not let you see or change detailed settings, at least for the incoming mail, and I think that's where things are falling apart.

Oh, well, much as I would like to stick with Mail, I think the Outlook Mac client is my way forward.

Thanks.