JIRA stops creating tickets from emails

Platform Notice: Cloud and Data Center - This article applies equally to both cloud and data center platforms.

Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

Symptoms

JIRA was processing emails without any issues, and then stopped all of a sudden.

The following appears in the atlassian-jira.log:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 2013-03-19 18:44:14,238 QuartzWorker-0 ERROR ServiceRunner Handler-name [atlassian.mail.incoming.mailfetcherservice] Handler-name[10060]: Exception: Folder is not Open java.lang.IllegalStateException: Folder is not Open at com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Folder.checkOpen(POP3Folder.java:547) at com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Folder.getProtocol(POP3Folder.java:577) at com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Message.loadHeaders(POP3Message.java:606) at com.sun.mail.pop3.POP3Message.getHeader(POP3Message.java:364) at com.atlassian.jira.service.services.mail.MailFetcherService$MessageProviderImpl.getAndProcessMail(MailFetcherService.java:257) at com.atlassian.jira.service.services.mail.MailFetcherService.runImpl(MailFetcherService.java:356) at com.atlassian.jira.service.services.file.AbstractMessageHandlingService.run(AbstractMessageHandlingService.java:252) at com.atlassian.jira.service.JiraServiceContainerImpl.run(JiraServiceContainerImpl.java:61) at com.atlassian.jira.service.ServiceRunner.execute(ServiceRunner.java:47) at org.quartz.core.JobRunShell.run(JobRunShell.java:195) at com.atlassian.multitenant.quartz.MultiTenantThreadPool$MultiTenantRunnable.run(MultiTenantThreadPool.java:72) at org.quartz.simpl.SimpleThreadPool$WorkerThread.run(SimpleThreadPool.java:520) 

ℹ️ If you hit this issue on a mail server other than Exchange, please comment on this issue and let us know.

Cause

The POP/IMAP server is not allowing JIRA to open the mailbox. The actual root cause to this can vary. In every case of this issue we have seen, it has always been caused mail server issues outside of JIRA's control.

Resolution

Fix this on your mail server. The common fix we have seen is to create a new mailbox and use that.

Updated on April 8, 2025

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