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Changing my gmail password has been both a blessing and a curse. I bought a password program that has a password generator and it encrypts the passwords it creates. I thought changing the gmail password would be relatively straightforward proposition, and it was after I jumped through a few hoops.
The problem I encountered after I changed the password was that it had to be changed in the Mac Mail.app in two places, and I didn't know about but one of them. What made it more difficult than usual was that I couldn't open the Mail Preferences page to search for the second location that, in all actuality, I didn't know I needed to know where that was yet.
I was prepared to reinstall the Operating System to correct the problem. A problem I only had in the Mail program and not the whole operating system. I knew how it got corrupted. I tried to transfer the settings from my 32-bit computer to the new 64-bit computer. It was carelessness. I did know better than to force the issue, but I guess I got impatient and didn't measure twice before I cut once.
The reason I was willing to go to all the trouble of reinstalling the Operating System was that if I did it, that would straighten out the mess I made of exporting the settings from my old computer to my new one. Even if it did correct my original mistake, reinstalling would mean I would have to redo all the network settings and set up new mail accounts. So, before I actually did it, I tried to find the solution again.
I downloaded a shareware program called Pacifist that was designed to retrieve Apple's software from the Installation DVD and reinstall it on my hard drive without deleting all my files and settings, and forcing me to set up the Operating System from scratch, and then downloading all the software updates from the time I bought the computer.
Either this software utility program didn't do right or I didn't understand how to get it to do right. There was a dialog box on the splash page for e-mailing the author of the software. I decided to send him an e-mail and ask for help. I conveniently forgot that in order to do that my Mail program had to work.
I unthinkingly clicked on the button to send this guy an e-mail, and was shocked when a new Reply page popped up ready to go. That wouldn't have happened if the Mail code was corrupted. I immediately clicked to see if the Preferences page would open now, and it immediately did just that. Hurrah!
Whatever the problem was, and I sorta think I finally figured it out, being able to search through the Mail.app Preferences page was key to me finding the problem. From there I was able to finally find the second location on the Advanced page where I had to change my gmail password, and suddenly I didn't have any more problems with my Mail program.
The mail,app grayed out and wouldn't do anything. All the troubleshooting I did indicated that nothing was wrong. The Pacifist software had a feature that checked the files on my hard drive against the files on the Installation DVD, and they were exactly the same. They were not corrupted. I repaired the Permissions twice and Verified the boot-up drive. Nothing wrong.
After I was able to get to the Preferences folder and started clicking around in the SMTP server setting I saw a dialog box that allowed all the server settings to be edited. Part of those settings was a password dialogue with asterisks hiding the password, but I knew my old password had seven digits in it, and the new one had ten. I typed the new one in, fired up the Connectivity Doctor, and it was butter, man, all butter.
"I love it when a good plan comes together." ~ The A-Team
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I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
