Setting up General Email (IMAP, SMTP) fails

[Blumenkraft]

I also was having hard time adding general email accounts. It seems the correct way was to add them and then do a reboot/shut down. Only after that they synced with no problem.

[jovirkku]

@telephon

What is indeed broken is that there are no error messages that help either advanced or new users to know what could be wrong or what could be done to change the situation.

Account creation should be more verbose in my opinion.

@mortenbo

The real problem - at least as it seems to me - is that when you change the password in Settings → accounts → general mail → server settings, it is not possible to save the change; there is no “accept” button appearing after the change. When you configure the account from the start, you get the “accept” button to save the data.

I agree with this. An explicit ‘Accept’ would make it easier. Also a dedicated action “Renew credentials” in the pulley menu would help.

@Blumenkraft

I also was having a hard time adding general email accounts. It seems the correct way was to add them and then do a reboot/shut down. Only after that, they synced with no problem.

A reboot should not be necessary. After tapping ‘Accept’ the last time, you should see momentarily this: “General email: Setting up account….” at the Settings > Accounts page (where all existing accounts are listed).

[Blumenkraft]

Yes, it should work like you said.

I guess i recalled the earlier wrong: after creating the account, it tries to check credentials (“Tarkistetaan kirjautumistietoja” in Finnish), then it says they’re wrong, and the account is not created (not giving even the “Accept” tap option). Then after a reboot the account is added right, and can be accepted. I don’t know what is going wrong, but this has been an issue since i was using Jolla 1 (up until 2020 or so).

It’s possible i am doing something wrong. I should look further into this.

[Maus]

@jovirkku

A reboot should not be necessary. After tapping ‘Accept’ the last time, you should see momentarily this: “ General email: Setting up account… .” at the Settings > Accounts page (where all existing accounts are listed).

Some of us occasionally never get that far. Unfortunately, the conditions which lead to this dysfunction have never been fully discovered, let alone documented. I understand that it never happened at Jolla in the QA process, and “there’s something wrong with General Email accounts in SFOS” is not the nicest bug report I can think of … but regardless, it is at least annoying and made some of us think IMAP/SMTP accounts would be entirely unsupported. “It worked OK back in SFOS 1” doesn’t help those who joined later.

[jovirkku]

@Maus

this dysfunction have never been fully discovered

What can be done? Maybe this:

1. Ensure that the basics are right - credentials and the settings required by the service provider.
2. Collect logs (some guidance here) when trying to sign in to the account.

[dyraig]

Just another data point from a freshly installed Xperia XA2 (4.4.0.72):

• Setting up an e-mail account fails in the way described in this bug report (timeout, no network activity on device or server)
• Installing jolla-settings-accounts-extensions-email-crypto did not make any difference
• Letting the account set-up run into the timeout, then reboot did work and successfully added the account

(so I now only have to deal with the incredible slowness of the e-mail client which was already a major nuisance on the Jolla and the Xperia X’s I have/had )