IMAP backup / sent messages question

I have 6050 messages in my sent Mail mailbox, but only 2905 messages in my Library>Mail>Mialboxes>Sent Messages.mbox>Messages folder. Why is this?
Does this mean I have no back-up of these 3000 missing messages?
Can I easily make a full backup of all my mail messages sent and received?
On the .mac server I have 3100 sent messages - shouldn't this be the same number as my sent mailbox in mail? I'm only using half of my alloted server space.
Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated

Hi Recto.
I believe it's me who "disappeared" from the other thread -- Not sure why. Sorry for that.
The thing is, this could be a Mail IMAP issue that you can do little or nothing about (maybe that's why I didn't reply). Here are two threads where similar issues have also been discussed (they refer to each other in some of the posts):
IMAP Deleted Messages AND Unread Messages
IMAP deleted mail won't stay deleted...
BTW, do you have any Mail plugins? In the Finder, go to each of the following folders (if they exist). What do you see there?
/Library/Mail/Bundles/
~/Library/Mail/Bundles/
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder. You can easily locate any of the folders referred to in this post by copying the file path here, doing Go > Go to Folder in the Finder, and pasting the file path there.

Similar Messages

Convert pop account to imap - lose sent messages and inbox messages

I converted a pop account to imap and lost the ability to search through messages prior to the conversion. Luckily I backed up all the messages. How do I get the ability to search them back? I tried moving them into the appropriate folder in finder, but they don't show up in mail.

i am having a similar problem - all of my sent messages disappeared from my mail program. i've located them in my home folder but can't figure out how to see them in my sent mailbox from the mail program ????

Lion IMAP account - Sent messages are not sync

Hi all,
this question is not strictly related to Lion, as this "problem" sussist even in the old Leopard, however I was believing it woul have been fixed with the new version.
I've my Mac Book Pro with all my email configured as IMAP.
This is great, I see my Inbox with the same exact copy of the message available online. When I send a message, this is stored in the sent mailbox, and this is great too.
But why all the old messages are not seen in the sent mailbox as well?
It doesn't make sense to me, and there is any option that make a difference. I was initially believing the "keep a local copy of the message" was affecting this.
But the most frustrating thing is that at the very bottom of the left aside there is a second entry, one for each account, which essentially show me a sort of "raw" account with all the folders and labelled messages as the online structure. Is it possible to get rid of that too?
Many thanks
Andrea

I've had the same problem for a while, even before Leopard. It definitely occurs more often when sending bigger messages (i.e. with attachments), and on slower connections (cell card, or even shaky wifi). Always unsettling when I notice it, and seriously frustrating when a Send fails and I've forgotten to Save as Draft.

How to get newly-added Sent messages to show up?

Somehow I lost all my Sent messages; don't really know whether I trashed them or they spontaneously disappeared.
But I had a recent hard disk backup, and tried copying my backed-up Sent messages to all of three locations:
~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Sent Messages.mbox
~/Library/Mail/[a POP server]/Sent Messages.mbox
~/Library/Mail/[another POP server]/Sent Messages.mbox
In no case upon subsequently launching Mail did they show up in Sent messages.
(If I actually send a new message, it goes into the third of the above locations.)
I even tried restoring all the other ancillary files straight from my backup:
Incoming_Mail
IncomingTable_ofContents
Info.plist
mbox
mbox.SKindex
Messages
tableofcontents
... but still no joy.
How do I restore my backup Sent messages?
(And why does this crap have to be so hard?!!)
Thanks!
PowerBook Pismo 500 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

George,
I am reviewing your very thorough listing of the contents of what appears to be the current Mail folder -- is this correct?
I am counting two POP folders, indicating two accounts -- is this what you expect, and have?
Based upon what I can see, you upgraded from Jaguar, directly to Tiger, in mid December 2005 -- is that correct?
The second of the two POP account folders, appears to not have had any activity (based of dates last modified) since late 2004 -- is this from a backup? Also, this second POP folder has never been converted to Tiger, consistent not only with dates, but there being no Messages folder.
In most xxxx.mbox folders, where there is both a mbox file, and a Messages folder, the comparison of size is favorable to all messages having been largely converted, successfully -- would you agree? However, some in the Mailboxes folder were not expanded, and I cannot be sure of those. These are three within a folder named Archive, so you would need to examine those.
The Sent Messages.mbox folder in the Mailboxes folder has NO message content, since its mbox is zero in size, and it has no Messages folder. The temp.mbox folder in the Mailboxes has a mbox file, whose size exceeds the size of the Messages folder -- would you have deleted some messages, after upgrading to Tiger, and that would explain its smaller size?
The first thing you should do, after quitting Mail, is to remove all files that are WITHIN any xxxx.mbox folder (including any within another such folder), of all files, EXCEPT the Info.plist, mbox, and Messages folder. Furthermore, for those where there is BOTH a mbox file and Messages folder, but the Messages folder size EXCEEDS the size of the mbox file, you can delete the mbox file, also.
If you really have a second POP file, and the one with 2004 dates last modified is only from backup, then you will keep the Info.plist file, and the mbox file in each mailbox, for now. It would be good to know if this is a currently valid account, however?
For those few, where the mbox size EXCEEDS the size of the Messages folder, I recommend copying those, and saving them on the Desktop. Then in the original, delete the mbox file, leaving ONLY the Info.plist file, and the Messages folder. Later you can decide if you think the old mbox files, of size, might have messages you still need to salvage -- we can work on that.
Now, at the root level of the Mail folder, delete the Envelope Index file. Launch Mail, and it will announce that it is ready to import your mailboxes. Allow this to continue, and it will only be reindexing those xxxx.mbox folder that have only a Messages folder, but for those with only a mbox file, it will be converting the message content, and creating a Messages folder -- again this only seemed to occur in the one, old POP account?
Later, you should look at those where conversion was needed, and if the Messages folder equals, or exceeds the size of the original mbox, then you can delete those mbox files.
I hope this is clear. It is not hard, but is very detailed work.
Ernie

Sent messages are sometimes not saved

Hello,
This is a follow up to this thread, which was never answered and is now archived:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2213207
In Mail.app, using IMAP, my sent messages are sometimes not saved. I'd say about 1 in 20 never appear in my Sent folder. The recipients always receive these messages, so it's not a delivery problem. I just don't retain a copy of them. This is very frustrating if I send a cost estimate to a client, or a detailed description of a technical problem that I need to refer back to later.
I've rebuilt my mailboxes and I've checked my IMAP folders on the server via a webmail interface, and the messages are not there.
Has anyone else experienced this? It's hard to believe I'm the only one, but it's hard to search for this problem because my search results are always full of people who have lost or can't save -any- of their sent messages. My problem is intermittent and random.
Thanks,
-Arlo

I have a similar occasional problem with an IMAP account using a Comcast Business Class Exchange server. I use Mail and my iPhone to access the account; I'm running OS X 10.6.4 on my laptop but my "sent messages" issue predates the latest release.
The first time I noticed this issue I thought, "I'll just access my mail via the Comcast web portal. It'll be in the 'sent' folder there." No dice. The "sent" messages simply never stay on the server, yet my recipients get them.
It's distressing. First, the solution would appear to be a switch to a MS mail client, which I swore off years ago. Second, I rely on having a "sent" message as a record. I switched off IDLE per your suggestion, Ernie, but otherwise I'm in the same boat as the others here. Please keep this thread alive. I'm hopeful that this can be resolved.

Sent messages help!?

I have two copies of sent messages on Nokia PC Suite. I want to make those two backups (sent messages only) merge together. However I found that to be impossible. I also tried to use Nokia Communication Center, by copying the sent messages to draft then exporting it. Then I restored the other backup, and did the same thing, later one I added them two sent messages together in drafts, however i cant copy/import from drafts to sent messages folder.
How can i add them two sent messages backups together?
Thanks,
Kawa

You can't merge the backups, but what you could do is export them to a CSV file using Communication Centre in PC Suite, copy/paste them into a single document, then import them back into the phone. then you could make a complete backup of all of the messages if that's what you aim to do.
If the messages in your phone are not the same ones included in the backup, then make a backup of them to protect.
Now remove those messages and remove the lmessages from one of the old backup files to the phone.
Go to Communication Centre and select the folder you want, then go Edit>Select All, then File>Expor. Choose a filename and make sure that CSV is selected as the file format.
No delete those messages from the phone, and restoremessages from the other oldbackup to the phone and repeat the same process. You can then open both files in a CSV-compatibleprogram such as Excel, and copy/paste into a single document which you save; making sure to preserve the CSV format. You might want to sort the file into order by the date columne so you can check if there are any messages that existed in both backups - delete any duplicated lines and save again (if using Excel, sort by selecting Sort from the Data menu).
Now delete messages from the phone, go to Communication Centre again and select File>Import, search for the new file and select it.
This is fiddly to do, but it's a handy way to merge two lots of message data.

How to make a copy of the IMAP Sent messages when the Sent folder file can not be found?

My Thunderbird works fine. I can also see messages sent in the Sent folder but I wonder are the sent messages only saved in the IMAP server. For the backup purposes I would like to copy the file of the Sent folder but I can not find a local file for it.
In /home/me/.thunderbird/44g5fxvp.default/ImapMail/mail.[mymail].fi I do have files
Archives-1.sbd
Archives.msf
Deleted Messages
Deleted Messages.msf
Drafts.msf
INBOX
INBOX.msf
inbox_old
inbox_old.msf
msgFilterRules.dat
Sent.msf
Templates.msf
Trash.msf
Trash.sbd
I.e.the Sent.msf esists but there is not file named Sent. Am I looking from a wrong place? Are my Thunderbird settings or preferences wrong? Is there something obvious I have missed?
What is the most convenient way to make a local copy of the Sent folder messages if Thunderbird does not make a local copy of it?
Information about my system:
Application Basics
Name Thunderbird
Version 31.0
User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.0
Application Build ID 20140721092545
Enabled Plugins about:plugins
Build Configuration about:buildconfig
Memory Use about:memory
Mail and News Accounts
account3 (imap) mail.[mymail].fi:993 SSL/TLS Normal password smtpa.[mymail].fi:465 SSL/TLS Normal password true

re: the Sent.msf esists but there is not file named Sent
That is because they are not stored on your computer they are stored on the server. The Sent.msf file is just an indexing file and does not store emails.
re INBOX, INBOX.msf, inbox_old, inbox_old.msf
These subscribed folders have been synchronised to get a local copy onto your computer in your Thunderbird profile folder.
You need to do the same with the 'Sent folder.
* https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/imap-synchronization#w_configuring-synchronization-and-disk-space-usage
then go into 'offline' mode to stop further synchronising.
Then you can right click on selected emails and save as .eml files in a folder external to Thunderbird.
You can also copy or move emails into a suitable folder in Local Folders. These folders keep emails on your computer, they are not modified by the server, they do not synchronise with any IMAP mail account.

If I do NOT store my sent messages on IMAP server, where are they?

My hosting service warned me that I am taking up too much space with my Sent messages being stored on the IMAP server. If I uncheck the box to store Sent messages on the server in my account preferences, then where do I find my sent messages? All of the folders listed alongside the sidebar seem to be linked directly to the IMAP account. I can't find my sent messages anymore.
They aren't gone though. If I check the box again, the messages show up again. So my question is how do I not store them on the server but still store and be able to see them on my computer?
Thanks
Bob

That is a solution if I want to do a one-time move of my sent messages to another folder and then leave things as-is. But once I stop storing the sent messages on the server, how do I access new sent messages after that? The folder is not visible anywhere, from what I can tell.

New User Question - How to Sync Sent Messages from Bold 9700

I am running BlackBerry Desktop Manager 5.0.1.37 and the 'Reconcile Email Messages' option is disabled and 'Email' is not mentioned in 'Configure Sync'. I have a BlackBerry non-enterprise data plan with my carrier. My computer is running XP PRO sp3 and Office 2007 is installed My question is how do I sync the sent messages from my Bold 9700 back into Outlook 2007? Thank you in advance.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

allanc wrote:
An alternative (for me) would be to *always and automatically* send a bcc to a specifc address of all my sent messages.
I cannot locate this option in the documentation.
Does it exist?.
Yes, in your BIS account setup for that email address. Edit the setup and you will see at the bottom a checkbox to automatically BCC messages.
Then, on your Outlook, set a filter for your incoming messages from yourself to be re-directed to your sent folder.
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My ipad mail is synced to my iMac mail account. On iPad, I can only see my inbox and sent messages. I can't see any of the folders I have created on my iMac. How do I do that? Probably a dumb question, but I know there's a lot of smart people out there!

My iPad mail is synced to my private email account, which I organise on my iMac. On iPad, I can only see inbox and sent messages folders, not any of the other folders in my email account I have created on my iMac. How do I get iPad to show my other folders? Probably a dumb question, but I know there's a lot of smart people out there.

If you select a mailbox, you should get an Edit button (easier to see in landscape mode). Clicking the button will provide you with check circles for the messages. You also get Delete and Move buttons at the bottom. Check the messages you want to move and then navigate to the mailbox you want to drop them into. I think as long as you can navigate to a mailbox you can move the messages to it.
In the Mac Mail application and probably Outlook on the Windows side, you also setup rules to move messages to specific mailboxes. If the mailboxes are stored on the server, then you can have the sorting done on the server and they should appear that way on the iPad. If your later messages do not show up, you may need to have the iPad app pulled down more messages until they are all showing.

Sent messages do not appear in sent folder - IMAP server

In my mac mail program, I have a .mac account and a gmail account, both of which work fine on all accounts. I also use another email account which is on an IMAP server. If I send an email from the webmail site, the sent message appears in my sent folder both at the webmail site AND in the folder on my mac email client. If I send an email using the mac email client, the message arrives to the destination, but no sent copy appears either in the sent folder on the mac client or at the webmail site. Please help!!
powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5)
powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Hi David,
Where in the Sidebar to the Mail window, does the
Sent folder appear, if one does, for the .mac
account?
Ernie
Ernie,
The sent folder (little airplane icon) for the .mac folder automatically appeared under my email accounts (in fact, both sent accounts - for my gmail and .mac - appeared as subfolders of the sent folder) when I set those accounts up. Those both work fine, though. It's the IMAP account that isn't working.

Mail 3, smtp, IMAP: sent messages are not saved on server

Hello,
I had problems using Mail 3 after I upgraded to Leopard, so I used Thunderbird for the time being. With the update 10.5.1 I tried again: most problems solved BUT: sent messages are not saved on the server in mailbox "Sent".
Some background: I deleted the folder "<User>/Library/Mail" and "<User>/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist" and configured Mail from scratch.
To be sure: I still have Thunderbird installed, and when I send with Thunderbird: a copy is placed in "Sent".
Another thing I noticed: it takes more than a minute to send from Mail 3 and a few seconds when I send from Thunderbird. I have another Macbook Pro with 10.5.0 installed: same problem with sending.
Any help is appreciated.
rene

Well, be stumped I did all that, but to be sure, I did it again:
I have a lot folders with subfolders and they are shown under my account name.
I created a new folder "test" in my IMAP account and designated it to be the new "Sent" folder. It replaces my previous Sent folder in the group Inbox, Drafts, Trash. My previous Sent folder now appears under my account name as a "normal" folder.
I send a message and the Activity monitor says: +"Delivering message: copying message"+. After a minute Mail is done. I check my (new) "Sent" folder and it's empty. I double check in webmail: it's empty.
So I go to the Finder and look in my IMAP folder: <user>/Library/Mail/<IMAP-account>/test.imapmbox and there is no folder "Messages", only Info.plist.
Then I try to move a message to the "Sent' folder: for a minute the Activity moinor says: Copying messages: copying message" and then Mail prompts: +"The message "testing" could not be+
+The connection to the server mail.hicetnunc.nl on port 143 timed out"+.
So it looks like Mail has a problem with the default "Sent" folder: it cannot copy messages to that folder at all! Aha!
But then I try to move a message to a "normal" IMAP folder: same thing! Mail cannot copy to any folder!
In both instances Mail says: +"The message "..." could not be be moved to the mailbox "..."+
+The connection to the server mail.hicetnunc.nl on port 143 timed out"+
Last thing: I try to move a message to a folder in the same account again. But in the process I quit Mail. I open Mail again and Mail is performing pending operations: copying message. After a while Mail prompts: +"Operation could not be completed. (MFMessageErrorDomain error 1028.)"+ and crashes... I open Mail again and it tries to peform pending operations. Again: an error message and Mail crashes. This keeps going on so I delete the whole account and set it up again. Nothing's changed...
I can receive and send, but sent messages are not copied to the "Sent" folder and I cannot move messages around within a IMAP account. But TADA!!!: I can move messages from account to account.

IMAP and Duplicate messages in Sent

I have set up Mail to work with AOL mail using IMAP. I would like to have me Sent emails synced, just like the rest of my folders. Unfortunately when I do that and I send an email from Mail it always gets included twice in the Sent folder. What do I do to fix this?
It seems that the program is saving a copy on the Sent folder and AOL is itelf including a copy. Any ideas?

Yes, you guessed it correctly and there is nothing you can do about it. The underlying problem is that AOL doesn’t let IMAP mail clients such as Mail to create or manage mailboxes at the root level of the account directory on the server, only as subfolders of Saved, which means you should turn OFF Store messages on the server for all the mailboxes in Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors, so that Mail stores those mailboxes locally on your computer instead.
But AOL also automatically saves the messages you send through its outgoing server in a server-stored Sent Items mailbox that Mail has no control over no matter what your settings. Hence, having your sent messages saved both in a locally stored Sent mailbox (by Mail) and in a server-stored Sent Items mailbox (by AOL) is normal. You should just ignore the Sent Items mailbox managed by AOL, amongst other reasons because AOL will eventually purge your messages from there after some time without you being able to do anything about that either.

Snow Leopard 10.6.1 IMAP Sent Messages Missing! Where are they?

I upgraded to 10.6 from 10.5 and everything was fine apart from push to the iPhone! In an effort to get it all working I decided to do a clean install, so backed up my mail accounts (which should now be in one place in 10.6) and everything else + made disc image etc. However, after doing the clean install, and reconnecting the backed up email accounts, I can only see the mails in the inbox. There are no emails in the sent messages! I have looked in the mail account folders and can’t see anywhere that sent messages are stored. I have also since the clean install created new users and sent emails to see if anything arrives in that users mail store, and nothing comes in that I can see, but they can see the newly sent message in their sent folder! Only sent messages prior to the re-install are missing. I have the old install of the server backed up, so I can access them if I knew where to get them from.
Where are sent messages stored? It looks like they are going to some other location on the server rather than the specified location in mail prefs.
Has anyone else experienced this, or have any advice.
Cheers

Hi, I used ditto (as root) to back up all the folders from /var/spool/imap/dovecot/mail/ and then to restore them – however, they are now in a new location on a separate drive which the mail prefs are pointing too. I have checked to see if anything is going into /var/spool/imap/dovecot/mail/ and nothing is there – which is correct.
I have also checked permissions and they are fine.
If this was a brand new install it would all be working as normal – I can see new sent messages, just not the old ones or old folders that users might have made.
However there is no folder in the UID’s called Sent Messages – even with new accounts! The only folders are "cur" (received mails), "new" and "tmp". I have no idea where the sent messages are being saved too (old or new)! I was expecting a folder within the UID’s with the sent messages inside.

I have IMAP mail. My sent messages do not reliably show up in Sent mail. Why?

I have IMAP email. My sent message do not reliably show up in Sent Messages. Is this a common problem and is there a fix?

Hi rgw1130,
I am sad to hear about the screen on your phone. If you do not have Back Up Assistant set up, then all your contacts will not sync. Have you checked with your Gmail account to see if your contacts are there? Keep us posted.
Thanks, BobbyS_VZW
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IMAP backup / sent messages question

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