Lost all my Sent Messages / How can I find them?

Question

I lost all my Sent Messages and I need them very much!! How can I recover them?
CRISMADRI

Answer 1

Hello and Welcome to Apple Discussions ...
Are you using Mac Mail or internet based like Yahoo or GMail?
If it's Mac Mail, with the Mail application open, from the Menu Bar click Mail/Preferences/Accounts/Mailbox Behaviors. You will see Drafts, Sent, Junk and Trash. Where it says Sent, do you have the button selected where it says: Store sent messages on the server. ???
This from the Mac Mail Help Viewer:
I can't find email messages stored on the mail server
If you have an IMAP email account and you set the account preferences to store copies of messages (draft, sent, junk, or trash) on the IMAP mail server, you might experience situations in which your messages are not stored where you expected.
When Mail attempts to store messages on the server, it looks for specific mailboxes, by name, in which to put the messages. If Mail doesn't find those mailboxes on the server, it tries to create them. If Mail can't create them on the server, it can't store the messages. For example, Mail looks on the server for a mailbox called Sent Messages in which to put the sent messages. If Mail can't find a Sent Messages mailbox on the server, it tries to create one. If it cannot, it doesn't save copies of messages you send. You might be able to address this issue if there is another mailbox on the IMAP server (for example, Sent Items) that contains the messages you're looking for. You can have Mail use that mailbox to store its sent messages. To do so, select that mailbox (listed under the account's name and icon) in the Mail viewer window, choose Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For and then choose Drafts, Junk, Sent, or Trash, as applicable. You can select any mailbox on your IMAP server to use to store draft, sent, junk, or deleted messages.
If you change the account preferences to no longer store copies of messages on the mail server, you'll see that messages aren't where they used to be. To use sent messages as an example: If you were saving sent messages on the server and then change your settings to save those messages on your computer, the Sent mailbox will change to contain only messages stored on your computer; messages that were stored on the server will no longer appear in that mailbox. Instead, you'll see those messages are now located under the account's name and icon at the bottom of the list of mailboxes, in a mailbox called Sent Messages. Similarly, if you change from saving sent messages on your computer to saving them on the server, the Sent Messages mailbox will change to contain only messages stored on the server. You'll now see the messages that were saved on your computer in a mailbox called Sent Messages, followed by the account name in parentheses, such as Sent Messages (.Mac Account).
Carolyn