Disappearing mail

I have my AOL account running through my mail on my iphone and my MacBook Pro. When I open my AOL mail I have messages disappearing without deleting them. It is usually after a couple days. I have looked for these emails in every trash folder I can find... it is like they just DISAPPEAR!!!
I especially need to find a recent confirmation email of my recent purchase of my new iPhone 4...ugh!!!
Any idea how to get them to stop deleting on their own or where they at least go?!?!?!?

An AOL account is accessed as an IMAP account.
If you ever used the old AOL program on a computer to a access the account, the AOL program had a new and old mail classification. Once a message was read with the AOL program, it was marked as old mail and no longer available in the account's Inbox mailbox. Old/read mail was purged/deleted by AOL automatically after a designated period of time such as after 30 days.
Not sure what is causing email to be purged from the server by AOL after a couple of days, but you may want to contact AOL technical support regarding this.

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Need to find certain disappeared mails

I know that a version of this question has been posted before...I won't bore you with specifics, but i'll just say that those posts leave me unsatisfied for various reasons.
So. I can't help it. I have to ask. Please help me out if you can.
I need to reference my sent mails from end May-June 2006. I use Mail as a POP account. Going back to retrieve the mails I need, I find that anything before June 29th has diappeared. I don't think it's a gmail thing, as it also happened on my old mac before I used gmail. It didn't happen when I used Outlook though, so I think its a Mail thing.
I just want to know if and how to get them back. They're pretty important (in hindsight).
Many many thanks!

David,
thanks for your reply. I've been away for a bit so didn't see it until now.
The OmniOutliner thing:
I figured a knowledgeable person such as yourself would be more thoroughly familiar with the full range of programs that generally come on a Mac, whereas there are some less often used ones that I don't use and, thus, I not familiar with. You may have in fact answered me, since you asked all these questions about it. I asked if it was a legit program existing on my Mac. Either the answer is no, or it's rarely enough used that you don't know it either. I can regard it as questionable. (Of course I didn't install/register with the program, or I wouldn't have asked you what it was. That is, unless I completely forgot doing so, in which case I certainly wouldn't ask you to read my mind and know that over myself.)
I was concerned because I feared it was one of those things that occasiobally come up when I'm on the internet, where a message that looks like it's generated by the computer pops up and says I may have some "errors", do I want to install some software to remove them. It's a scam that I'm sure you are familiar with. I feared it might be one of those, in which case I need to know so I can shut it down as soon as possible and not let it run in the future should I see it again. No, I don't expect you to know everything, but I figured you'd either be familiar with it or you wouldn't. You're not, so...now I know.
As for the Mail rules:
Now that you have mentioned what type of rules to look at, I can check (again), focusing on those types of rules to ensure that there are no rules selected that might cause this behavior. I do in fact pay attention when I get the "apply rules" message and believe I manage it knowledgeably (of course I could be wrong on that).
Everyone says it must be something in the rules, but I don't see anything of the sort, so I was asking more specifically what to look for. I have looked at my rules several times before for things that might cause the disappearance of messages and have never found anything indicative of the behavior exhibited by Mail. Having triple checked now the things you specifically mention, I can tell you that there aren't even any questions in the preferences about what to do with Inbox mails. I don't know where else there would be Inbox rules (maybe someone such as yourself does, i dunno). There is a place for me to give rules about Junk Mail, and a place to give rules for Sent Mails. There is no category of options for Inbox Mails that I see.
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.9) using Mail

The strange case of the disappeared mails...

I've two mail accounts set on my ipad and I'm having some funny problems...
both accounts are POP3
first, it sometimes happens that mails downloaded AND deleted from my inbox (but still on the server) are downloaded a second and even a third time, without any chance of avoiding it. please note that both accounts are set on "remove from server if deleted from inbox" on my ipad advanced mail settings panel...
second, and more annoying, yesterday evening every mail in one of the two inboxes have been removed from the device: it wasn't simply moved in the trashbox but those mails just vanished without even saying goodbye... and of course I didn't touch anything neither on the ipad nor on the macbook that downloads the mail from the same server: everything was just like before, and something similar never happened. of course, the mails have been downloaded first on the ipad and after on the macbook, and the mails disappeared were both recent and old, the whole inbox with its 200 mails...
called Apple support and they suggested me to change the setting from POP3 to IMAP, but my provider doesn't let me for free and I prefer to download mails on the device and not leave them on the server...
anybody has a solution/suggestion?
thank you,
david

I've two mail accounts set on my ipad and I'm having some funny problems...
both accounts are POP3
first, it sometimes happens that mails downloaded AND deleted from my inbox (but still on the server) are downloaded a second and even a third time, without any chance of avoiding it. please note that both accounts are set on "remove from server if deleted from inbox" on my ipad advanced mail settings panel...
second, and more annoying, yesterday evening every mail in one of the two inboxes have been removed from the device: it wasn't simply moved in the trashbox but those mails just vanished without even saying goodbye... and of course I didn't touch anything neither on the ipad nor on the macbook that downloads the mail from the same server: everything was just like before, and something similar never happened. of course, the mails have been downloaded first on the ipad and after on the macbook, and the mails disappeared were both recent and old, the whole inbox with its 200 mails...
called Apple support and they suggested me to change the setting from POP3 to IMAP, but my provider doesn't let me for free and I prefer to download mails on the device and not leave them on the server...
anybody has a solution/suggestion?
thank you,
david

Disappearing mail with homefolders

Hello,
We have some home folders, which we used with OD.
Everything seems to be working fine, accept the mail.
We pop the mail at our provider.
The strange thing is that several times a day the mail is disappearing and we get the message "message 'message name' could not be moved to the local mailbox 'mailbox name'".
When this is happened all the mail in our mailboxes are disappeared and we have to logout or give a restart to get our mail back.
Does someone know this problem or have a solution for us.
Any suggestion is welcome.
Thanks,
Harry

unknown

Disappearing mail in INBOX

I use Earthlink for my ISP. If I read my emails on Earthlink's Web Mail and then open my Apple Mail app my Inbox will appear empty. It seems that any email I opened in Earthlink will disappear in Mail along with all emails received earlier.
Why would this happen? My email situation is a mess because of this.
The emails are not lost; they still reside on the harddrive. Apple's Mail just won't load them into the Inbox.
On other occassions the mail will reappear in the Inbox. I haven't pinned down the mechanism yet but it may be that mail reappears if I don't use my ISP's Web Mail for a couple of rounds.

Cracked it myself, after a bit of thinking. I was using a mail rule moving non spam to my main in box from the IMAP box when downloading, so when iphone looked only spam was left. If mac uploaded the mail and moved after the iPhone, the non spam disappeared. By changing the rule to copy instead of move seems to have solved all the issues.

Missing mail - disappearing mail

after upgrading t 10.4.6 mail.app has suddenly exhibiting some very strange behavior;
i watch emails coming down from server, and then i go to read some of them - even clicking on one for instance _ and it disappears. fortunately i am able to log into my mail server via control panel and see the mail.
the other thing is there are a number of folders that show that messages (apparently unread) are in the folder, however when clicking on the folder name, the folder is empty.
doing a "get info" on the folder shows the messages that are on the server related to that particular POP account.
also, i have noticed many topics related to missing email, and loads of posting reads, but NO responses. what is up with that?

Problems appearing as a result of updating the system software are usually a consequence of the update not being done properly. Read the following article for guidelines on how to properly install system updates:
Installing software updates
In particular, you should consider verifying/repairing your disk (not just repairing permissions):
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
You may also want to consider reinstalling the update using the combo installer:
Mac OS X 10.4.6 Combo Update for PPC
That said, your problems might very well have nothing to do with any of the above. If I've understood it correctly, your problems are not the result of upgrading from either Jaguar or Panther (i.e Mail 1.x). That is, either you started using Mail in Tiger (Mail 2.0) or you didn't experience any problems when upgrading from Mail 1.x, right?
If the above is correct, try this:
1. Quit Mail.
2. In the Finder, go to HOME/Library/Mail/. You may want to make a backup copy of this folder, just in case something goes wrong -- e.g. by dragging it to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down.
3. Locate the Envelope Index file and move it to the Desktop (to be deleted later if this solves the problem).
4. Launch Mail again and let it finish re-indexing everything -- it says it's "importing", but it's just re-creating the Envelope Index file.
It could also be that you have problems with rules, but try the above first.

Disappearing Mail App

Since upgrading to Maverix OS my mail app just disappears, im not doing anything different. It just hides somewhere, If I choose mission control sometimes its ther on the 2nd Monitor other times I just click the mail icon in the bottom bar, any ideas?

I fixed this myself after reading comments regarding similar strange behaviour & google drive, once I quit google drive the problem ceased.

Disappearing mail and tasks after security update -- help?!?

Hello, friends. Hope someone has some advice. Running Tiger 10.4.10 on a G5; Installed security update 2007-006 just now, restarted and opened Entourage to get to work.
All my tasks and non-IMAP mail has disappeared, replaced by mail and tasks from 2005 that have already been deleted and/or archived. I have a week-old backup disk of Entourage items but have added mail and tasks since then. Have repaired permissions, checked identities, everything -- anyone know how I can get my stuff back?
Thanks very very much.
P.S. -- I cannot recommend installing security updates immediately anymore. The last 3 updates have completely hosed my system in some form or another, and it's very frustrating.
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Bumping to see if anyone's learned anything. Project that wasn't in the last backup has just been ordered due. Aaaaigh.
Thank you very very much.

Disappeared mail

Hello everybody. I need your help because I've tried using all the ways that I foun on the web and I had no result. I used especially this: https://www.mozilla-hispano.org/documentacion/Recuperar_mensajes_borrados, and others in English, too.
The point is this: I have a Gmail account configured in IMAP to delete messages from the server. Last Monday I started to organize in folders all my messages and, at night, I decided to delete the Gmail folder named "All mail" ("Todos" in Spanish) where, in my opinion, the messages were repeated; I think it was a mistake: the mails even disappeared of the trash. I have the original files in my Thunderbird's Profile folder: the total size of this folder is, approximately, 1,5 GB. I wish someone would provide me a solution, because I searched a lot on the internet and I found no solution to my problem. If you need more details I will give you what you need. Thank you guys.

Hello Matt. Thank you for help me. Fortunately, I could solve the problem yesterday; I turned on my PC to write the solution while I saw your answer. I did a clean install of Thunderbird erasing the folders located in '''C:\Users\MYUSERNAME\AppData\Local\Thunderbird''' and '''C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming''' (I think this is not necessary) and I put my email files (eg: INBOX + INBOX.msf) in '''C:\Users\MYUSERNAME\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\MYPROFILE.default\Mail\Local Folders.''' After this, the email folders appeared perfectly containing all the messages I have, although, I needed to create a speciall folder named 'Gmail' to ''recreate'' the Gmail ''like'' folders. Anyway, I want to ask you: is there any solution for ''this'' kind of problem?

Disappearing Mail viewer window

I just started having a strange problem with Apple Mail application. Mail works fine for a few minutes following a restart, but after a few minutes, the view window disappears. It's not hidden, minimized, and Spaces is not enabled. Mail shows as running, but the window is simply gone. Quiting and restarting Mail does not resolve the problem, nor does relogging in. Only restarting the Mac works, and then only for a few minutes. Anyone else having this problem? I suspect it may be associated with some kind of bizarre .Mac syncing issue.

I think I have a solution. I had a hunch it had something to do with spaces because re-enabling spaces brought back the missing window.
What seems to happen is that the mail window is moved to some space even though spaces is turned off. What seemed to solve it, is deleting all informationen from spaces, i.e. in which space programs should live. In my case mail was assigned to space 3.
I haven't had time to thoroughly test it but everything seems fine for now.
The time machine backup probably only worked because it went back to a state before spaces was enabled for the first time. Or maybe it's altogether a different though similar looking problem that I had.
-c.

Disappearing Mail signatures

Every time I shut down my computer, all of the signatures I've created get wiped out. I even asked about it during a genius appointment at the store and they couldn't figure out why or how to fix it. Can anyone out there help?
In the meantime (for the last couple of years!), I've had to recreate the signatures every time I shut down my computer, which means I don't shut it down as often as I should, and I usually just sign my name. However, for business emails, I need the signature and have to constantly put it in again.
Does anyone have any experience fixing this problem?

Sorry you're having problems with this. I just upgraded and was surprised to see my signatures disappeared too. After playing around I found a solution that worked for me. I am lucky enough to have more than one laptop running OS X. I went to the laptop that hadn't been upgraded and added an iCloud email account, then copied all of my signatures to this account. Voila! The newly upgraded laptop had all the signatures. Mavericks gets its signatures from the iCloud account so you have to put them there. Once they're there, signatures work flawlessly as before. I use signatures to set my default message font and really missed them when they disappeared. By the way, I don't understand why you have to recreate your signatures. I have never had that problem.

Disappearing mail content? (HELP!)

I've filed my emails diligently in mail folders & suddenly I get this when looking for emails from earlier in 2006:
'The message from <me / others> concerning <subject> has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it.'
This only affects one mail folder so far, and the email subject is still there, however I did downlaod all the messages as far as I know...
Please HELP! (yes I have daily backups but it would be a lot of work!)

bma, you're clearly having system-wide problems, probably caused by some filesystem corruption. You should start by verifying/repairing your disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
If you continue having problems with Mac OS X in general, you should consider searching for similar issues in the Using Mac OS X Tiger forum and start a new thread there if you need further assistance.
After having fixed your system-wide problems come back here to fix any Mail-specific issues that may remain.

Passwords randomly disappearing Mail app (v4.5)

Hi there
I have a problem with Mail (v4.5 OSX 10.6.8) where Mail just seems to randomly forget my passwords for my various email accounts.
I have Mail running most of the time and every so often a box will appear asking me to put in a password for one of my email accounts. After putting in my password I check in Mail Preferences - Accounts and the password field for the affected account is blank. I put in my password and save the new settings then all will work ok for a while until the next bout of senility and it happens again with another account. This isn't happening with just one account but seems to be happening at random with the 7 email accounts I have set up in Mail. The accounts I have set up are all POP3 and are from various different providers (Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc). All helpful suggestions are appreciated.
Many thanks in advance
Jonty

Keychain does not mark mail account keychain entries as "mail.app" entries but as internet entries. A search for imap and smtp keys found the old entries. I deleted the entries and mail generated new ones. Seems to have fixed the issue for me.

Disappearing Mail Application

I updated my software last night on a Mac running OS X 10.6.8. When I restarted the computer, Mail was erased. Any suggestions to resolve this issue? Thanks!
M

Go to Applications folder and check if it's there. If not, reinstall 10.6.8 > http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1399

Disappearing mail-all gone

Okay....
I was typing this long-winded email. Then suddenly the email was gone. I didn't see it happen....it was just gone. Not even an email in the drafts folder.
OMG......what happened? Is it really gone? Say it isn't so? Ohhhhhh....someone please tell me where it is hiding.
I use the hunt & peck method and can't stand the thought of typing that over again.
Edit: oh yeah....it isn't in the trash either....boooo hooooooo....help!
Message was edited by: jabberwock

Ernie,
Hi....thank you so much for taking my question.
The account is POP. The drafts folder is gone and no mail that I was writing.
The preferences seem normal. The mailbox behavior says to store notes in inbox, never erase sent msg's. But I never sent it anyway. Also never erase msg in Junk Mail. And move deleted msg's after one week old. But I was typing at the moment it happened.
This never happened to me before and I have used Mail for many years.
Can you help me?

Disappearing mail

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