Uploading attachments usually takes far more time, compared to downloading, with most connections, and has little to do with the age or quality of your hardware.

If you have an anti-virus program scanning outgoing mail, that could slow the process; disable the scanning of outgoing mail and see if that makes a difference.

If your email service automatically copies sent messages to an IMAP Sent folder (e.g. Gmail, Hotmail), you should uncheck 'Place a copy in' under Tools/Account Settings/accountname/Copies & Folders to avoid duplicates and additional uploading time.

Also, if the account is IMAP and your Sent folder is large or uncompacted, it could take longer to update (uploading a large Sent file to the remote server). In this case, consider moving sent messages to a separate IMAP or local folder. With POP accounts, sent messages are stored on the local computer and therefore move very fast.

jbugler said

Hi The context of this question is:

• I've had an Apple iMac for just over 3 years;
• and I've been using their 'Mail' application to send/receive emails;
• but not infrequently, when I send an email with one or more attachments all of the email doesn't get to the recipient;
• and after working with Apple and getting nowhere;
• I'm now using Thunderbird instead of Mail.

I like Thunderbird, but I've noticed that if I send an email with an attachment (an example is an email I've just sent with a 2.6MB attachment), it takes a while to both (a) first send and then (b) copy the email to my 'send' folder. Are there any 'settings' changes I can make to speed things up, or do I just need a bigger machine? (I've noticed that over the 3+ years I've had the iMac, it's got progressively slower and slower.) Regards John Bugler

Many thanks

Many thanks