Missing messages in Mail (IMAP)

Since upgrading to ML I've noticed that at least two of my email accounts don't receive all my messages. For example, I'll receive a reply-all to a message which was also addressed to me, but didn't get the original message which was sent earlier...
If I shut down and restart Mail, then the missing message appears where it belongs in my Inbox... I've noticed this on two of my four email accounts (all IMAP). This is quite concerning. It did not occur prior to Mountain Lion. If it matters, I use conversation view in Mail.
Is this a known problem, or is there something I can do to fix it? I've had no other problems with ML, it works great. Thanks.

MacBook Pro andiMac with IOS 10.9.5

Similar Messages

Missing message in mail sended with SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_ATT_SEND_API1

Hi all,
I've created a new function module which calls the SAP standard function module SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_ATT_SEND_API1. The mail is sent to the correct receiver. <b>The problem:</b> The message field in all my mails is empty. Only subject field is filled.
Thanks in advance,
Fabian
Here is the coding:
FUNCTION z_isa_send_mail_for_new_shipto.
*"*"Lokale Schnittstelle:
*" IMPORTING
*"     VALUE(I_RECEIVER) LIKE SOMLRECI1 STRUCTURE SOMLRECI1
*"     VALUE(I_SUBJECT) LIKE SODOCCHGI1-OBJ_DESCR
*" TABLES
*"      T_TEXT STRUCTURE SOLISTI1
* Data Declaration
DATA:
    lt_packing_list LIKE sopcklsti1 OCCURS 0 WITH HEADER LINE,
    reclist LIKE somlreci1 OCCURS 1 WITH HEADER LINE,
    gd_doc_data LIKE sodocchgi1.
gd_doc_data-doc_size = 1.
* Populate the subject/generic message attributes
gd_doc_data-obj_langu = sy-langu.
gd_doc_data-obj_name = 'SAPRPT'.
gd_doc_data-obj_descr = i_subject.
gd_doc_data-sensitivty = 'F'.
* Describe the body of the message
CLEAR lt_packing_list.
REFRESH lt_packing_list.
lt_packing_list-transf_bin = space.
lt_packing_list-head_start = 1.
lt_packing_list-head_num = 0.
lt_packing_list-body_start = 1.
DESCRIBE TABLE t_text LINES lt_packing_list-body_num.
lt_packing_list-doc_type = 'RAW'.
APPEND lt_packing_list.
* Create receiver list
reclist-receiver = i_receiver-receiver.
reclist-rec_type = i_receiver-rec_type.
APPEND reclist.
* Send Message
CALL FUNCTION 'SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_ATT_SEND_API1'
       EXPORTING
            document_data              = gd_doc_data
            put_in_outbox              = 'X'
       TABLES
            packing_list               = lt_packing_list
            contents_txt               = t_text
            receivers                  = reclist
       EXCEPTIONS
            too_many_receivers         = 1
            document_not_sent          = 2
            document_type_not_exist    = 3
            operation_no_authorization = 4
            parameter_error            = 5
            x_error                    = 6
            enqueue_error              = 7
            OTHERS                     = 8.
ENDFUNCTION.

Hi Fabian,
Your code seemes to be good, maybe you schould ensure that your internal table is filled. I am not sure if it is really necessary to tell the function the exact size of your message...Have a look at my code..
I send you my code for the same function,maybe this helps.
    DATA: lt_objpack TYPE STANDARD TABLE OF sopcklsti1,
          lt_objhead TYPE STANDARD TABLE OF solisti1,
          lt_objtxt   TYPE STANDARD TABLE OF solisti1,
          lt_reclist TYPE STANDARD TABLE OF somlreci1.
    DATA: ls_objpack TYPE sopcklsti1,
          ls_objhead TYPE solisti1,
          ls_objtxt   TYPE solisti1,
          ls_reclist TYPE somlreci1,
          ls_doc_chng TYPE sodocchgi1,
          ls_order    TYPE bapiret2.
    DATA: ld_tablines LIKE sy-tabix,
          ld_to       TYPE yylog_mail,
          ld_cc       TYPE yylog_mail,
          ld_bcc      TYPE yylog_mail,
          ld_uzeit(8) TYPE c,
          ld_datum(10) TYPE c.
* Creation of the document to be sent
    CLEAR ls_doc_chng.
* File Name
    ls_doc_chng-obj_name = 'SENDFILE'.
    CONCATENATE gd_datum+6(2) '.'
                gd_datum+4(2) '.'
                gd_datum(4)
           INTO ld_datum.
    CONCATENATE gd_uzeit(2) ':'
                gd_uzeit+2(2) ':'
                gd_uzeit+4(2)
           INTO ld_uzeit.
* Mail Subject
    CONCATENATE 'MGV - Criação ordens de venda' ld_datum ld_uzeit
                      INTO ls_doc_chng-obj_descr SEPARATED BY space.
* Mail Contents
    CLEAR ls_objtxt.
    ls_objtxt = 'MGV - Resultado da criação de ordens de venda.'.
    APPEND ls_objtxt TO lt_objtxt.
    CLEAR ls_objtxt.
    APPEND ls_objtxt TO lt_objtxt.
* Pass messages from result table to the mail body
    LOOP AT i_order_result INTO ls_order.
      CLEAR ls_objtxt.
      ls_objtxt = ls_order-message.
      APPEND ls_objtxt TO lt_objtxt.
    ENDLOOP.
    DESCRIBE TABLE lt_objtxt LINES ld_tablines.
    CLEAR ls_objtxt.
<b>    READ TABLE lt_objtxt INTO ls_objtxt INDEX ld_tablines.
    ls_doc_chng-doc_size = ( ld_tablines - 1 ) * 255
                                               + STRLEN( ls_objtxt ).</b>
* Creation of the entry for the compressed document
    CLEAR ls_objpack-transf_bin.
    ls_objpack-head_start = 1.
    ls_objpack-head_num = 0.
    ls_objpack-body_start = 1.
    ls_objpack-body_num = ld_tablines.
    ls_objpack-doc_type = 'RAW'.
    APPEND ls_objpack TO lt_objpack.
    ls_objhead = 'ENCOMENDAS'.
    APPEND ls_objhead TO lt_objhead.
* GET RECIPENTS FROM CONFIGURATION TABLE
    CLEAR: ld_to,
           ld_cc.
    get_mail_config( EXPORTING id = 'TO'
                     IMPORTING val = ld_to ).
    get_mail_config( EXPORTING id = 'CC'
                     IMPORTING val = ld_cc ).
    get_mail_config( EXPORTING id = 'BCC'
                     IMPORTING val = ld_bcc ).
* Completing the recipient list
* target recipent
    CLEAR ls_reclist.
    ls_reclist-receiver = ld_to. "Destination variavel
    ls_reclist-express = 'X'.
    ls_reclist-rec_type = 'U'.
    APPEND ls_reclist TO lt_reclist.
* copy recipents
    IF NOT ld_cc IS INITIAL.
      CLEAR ls_reclist.
      ls_reclist-receiver = ld_cc.
      ls_reclist-express = 'X'.
      ls_reclist-rec_type = 'U'.
      ls_reclist-copy     = 'X'.
      APPEND ls_reclist TO lt_reclist.
    ENDIF.
* blind copy recipents
    IF NOT ld_bcc IS INITIAL.
      CLEAR ls_reclist.
      ls_reclist-receiver   = ld_bcc.
      ls_reclist-express    = 'X'.
      ls_reclist-rec_type   = 'U'.
      ls_reclist-blind_copy = 'X'.
      APPEND ls_reclist TO lt_reclist.
    ENDIF.
    CALL FUNCTION 'SO_NEW_DOCUMENT_ATT_SEND_API1'
      EXPORTING
        document_data              = ls_doc_chng
        commit_work                = 'X'
      TABLES
        packing_list               = lt_objpack
        object_header              = lt_objhead
        contents_txt               = lt_objtxt
        receivers                  = lt_reclist
      EXCEPTIONS
        too_many_receivers         = 1
        document_not_sent          = 2
        document_type_not_exist    = 3
        operation_no_authorization = 4
        parameter_error            = 5
        x_error                    = 6
        enqueue_error              = 7
        OTHERS                     = 8.
    IF sy-subrc <> 0.
      MESSAGE s112.
    ENDIF.

Missing messages in Mail.

I have 3 email accounts and it appears I receive all email sent to those accounts with the following exception:
Account #3, I receive all mail except, we have a website that forwards an email quote request to three of our people, one gets the emails and the other two do not. In researching, I found that Mail is getting the email messages, but not displaying them from this server. I sent a test email from the website, but it never showed up. I then did a search in Mail on a text string that I put in the message and the message then popped up in Mail and looks normal. When I looked at the headings for the message, it shows that it is in the proper Inbox and I can read it fine. BUT, as soon as I delete the text string from the FIND box, the message disappears.
The message is somewhere, but where? How do I find them?

It looks like you are storing too much mail in your account mailboxes -- see Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty.
You may try to recreate Envelope Index, but it may fail if your mailboxes are already too big:
1. Quit Mail.
2. In the Finder, go to HOME/Library/Mail/.
3. Locate the Envelope Index file and move it to the Desktop (to be deleted later if this fixes 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.

I'm missing older, non-archived messages in my IMAP inbox

I'm running T-Bird 31.2.0 on a Win 7 PC. I use T-Bird as an IMAP desktop client. Recently I noticed that all my messages earlier than 10/12/2014 have disappeared from my Inbox. When I run a search, the missing messages show up in the search results, but I can't get to them.
My Archive folders have messages from 06/01/2014 - 9/16/2014, but nothing from 01/01/2013 - 5/31/2014 or from 9/17/2014 - 10/11/2014.
I've checked my profile, and there doesn't appear to be a second folder for this account. I tried deleting .msf and repairing folder. No change.
Any thoughts?

I posted a similar issue. I discovered there was a destructive TB update that purged all my sent mail. I've asked if there was a backup made as part of the upgrade but no one has responded yet (so, i'm assuming no). As a first time, and very new TB user, I would never have thought that I had to do weekly backups (doing that now). Also, turns out that TB was not/is not posting my sent mail back to my host email account (just keeping it locally) - that is most likely why the upgrade deleted all my mail. The upgrade did not respect the settings (never delete messages) and performed a synch anyway and deleted all my local sent mail. Pretty crappy really....

IMAP message list and search missing messages

I access an IMAP server from my MacBook and iPad. When I look in folders on the server other than the inbox, the MacBook shows all the messages but the iPad is missing many. When I compare the two, the iPad has all, one-for-one, for the past four days or so. Before that, the list on the iPad is spotty. I have touched the update and download more messages buttons.
Searching on the iPad also misses messages, but different ones. I can search on the iPad for messages I see on the Mac, and sometimes find them, although they don't show up in the message list (for example, the message from about five days ago, immediately before the last message which shows up consistently on both the Mac and iPad). In other cases, I can do a search on the Mac and iPad, and the Mac will show more hits from the search than the iPad.
So, mail on the iPad, at least with an IMAP server, is unreliable. Is this well-known? Will this improve on iOS 4.2?
Thanks for your help,
==Leonard

I did an experiment with the IMAP server I have which stores the mail in mbox format in the home directory of the Linux server I have a login to. I can drag messages in any order I want from the inbox to a folder, and can verify that in the mbox file, they are stored in the order I dragged them in. Yes, those messages are shown in the iPad message list in chronological order, regardless of the order I dragged them into the folder.
But, earlier messages are not shown in the iPad message list in the order they are in the mbox file or chronological order. Well, they are in chronological order, but with big time gaps. For example, the iPad shows a message from April 6 followed by April 1. But, I can see on my Mac that I have many messages between April 1 and 6. They do not appear on the iPad.
Ah, I think I see something. Some of the messages in this mailbox are log files with timestamps at the beginning of the line. The iPad mail program appears to be taking the time from the first line in the body of the message rather than the timestamp in the mail message envelope.
No, it just got stranger. I selected another mailbox, and then went back to the mailbox with the log files I was looking at before and the order of messages has changed! Now there are messages from May where there were messages from April. Still might be the timestamps in the body of the message because those are the first messages shown in the list after the last non-log-file messages.
Now there are messages missing between April 30 and May 4, where I can see that the messages exist by looking in the Mac mail program. I can see that all the missing messages on the iPad are the ones for which the body starts with a timestamp.
Perhaps the iPad has trouble with an IMAP server using mbox format.
Another complication in my case is that the messages in the mbox file are not stored in the order they were received. I suspect this is because I copied them there, using Apple Mail, from previously being stored on my Mac. That is, I had all my mail On My Mac, and then selected all the messages in the folder and dragged them to the IMAP server folder. That put them into the mbox file in an unusual order. But, on the Mac, they show chronologically, regardless of the order stored in the file.
The iPad also does this, for recent messages (which don't contain those log files with timestamps), but the timestamps in the body of the message may be confusing it.

Missing messages and other recent Mail.app quirks

HI,
Although I've read through many post on this issue, I haven't found one that seems to apply to my situation. And, the process seems really confusing... so I thought I'd ask you guy's.
I rebuilt my inbox's last night, and:
1. 1 of my 2 POP inbox's is now empty (except for a couple new mails today). There were about 150 messages.
2. My .mac inbox is receiving mails, but first the little spinner thing wouldn't stop spinning, and has switched to a blue clock looking thing that's stuck at about 10:30 (may have moved to 11:00 now?).
3. Drafts don't seem to be saving.
4. Seems that the audio feedback is gone or was gone (the sound is up and the speakers to work).
5. I was getting a strange error message when sending that I didn't write down (something to do with the Trash and 0 space or something).
I've been on this new machine (OS 10.4.5) since November with no Mail.app (2.0.7) trouble at all (I moved from a TiBook that had once had Panther on it). And, I didn't let this last Security update install. I had been trying to resolve some POP SMTP server issues, but went with .mac with the "reply to" option (I'm stuck in a hotel in southern China), and I did lose one email that I had just sent... which prompted the rebuild of the mailbox's. Still can't find that missing email- but I did get a reply from the person I sent it to.
There weren't many messages in that now empty inbox, but they were the important ones (which I think I located in Library > Mail folder thanks to you folks).
I can survive with issues 2 - 5 above if necessary, but I'd really like to deal with the missing message problem.
Should I just "import mailbox's" back in and hope it all works? Will I lose those new mails from today? Can you offer me any advice?
Sorry if I rambled on too much (too much spare time on a Sunday morning in China), and thank you in advance for any thoughts,
Guy

Guy,
Different answers for each file. The CachedData1 is a leftover file from an IMAP or .mac account -- Mail no longer uses that method of caching, so delete.
The two MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded are used with each POP account, and are still valid file types -- however, one of them should be modified each time you access your POP server -- check the dates modified again.
The two files named to begin with Incoming are leftovers, and probably must simply be deleted. They resulted in the mailbox where you found them when a message had been received (even if by transfer) and that mailbox was not opened prior to the conversion. In Panther, and earlier, these files would disappear when the mailbox was opened to view. It probably is only one or two messages -- the Incoming_Mail file can be read with TextEdit to confirm.
I think the Envelope Index Journal results during an incomplete indexing attempt Mail has made at some point, was meant to be temporary -- I am not entirely sure about this, but I do not have one.
The time out on port zero is one I need to research -- although I have seen a few reports, and think there is some explanation, I cannot remember as I write this.
There is an ongoing issue with .mac and continuation of the indicator for activity -- I see this on my iBook G4, but not on my G5. Useless needed for Offline use, set Mail Preferences/Accounts/Advanced to Don't save all message and attachment for Offline viewing, which may help. I hope this one get addressed in some future update.
Ernie

I keep getting a message "The MobileMe IMAP server ... rejected the password for ...." I can use that password when I go to iCloud, but my e-mails won't download to my computer. What's the mix-up?

I keep getting a message "The MobileMe IMAP server ... rejected the password for ...." I can use that password when I go to iCloud (and to this discussion), but my e-mails won't download to my computer. What's the mix-up?

If the setting is greyed out perhaps you have restrictions enabled that would prevent someone from changing accounts. Settings>General>Restrictions>Allow Changes>Accounts.

Mail is unable to find responses to emails and missing messages

Since making the change to apple mail about 90 days ago, I have had an ongoing problem with missing messages sent from my desktop and iphone. They are not in the sent folder or the separate project email folder. However, the arrow next to the original message shows that the original email was responded to. When I click on the arrow, I receive a message saying that it cannot find the message and that I may have deleted the message.
I moved the Mail folder from the Caches folder and still no help.
I am required to keep all email messages sent and received. But this is an ongoing problem that has resulted in several lost messages. If I cannot resolve this issue, I may need to switch to a different email program.

oops sorry, Mailbox Behaviors: Drafts, store messages on server is checked. Notes, Store notes in inbox is checked. Sent, Store sent messages on server is checked and it is set to never delete sent messages. Junk, nothing is checked and delete junk messages when: is set to never. Trash, move deleted messages to the trash mailbox is checked along with, Store deleted messages on the server. Permanently erase deleted messages when, is set on, One week old.
i also use a mac laptop from time to time but the missing messages were sent from the desktop.

My iPad give me a message that my imap gmail account cannot connect. I was able to get mail yesterday, now can't get it today.

My iPad give me a message that my imap gmail account cannot connect. I was able to get mail yesterday, now can't get it today.

Maybe the mail server is down.

Mac Mail IMAP shows read message when already read from other devices

Mac Mail IMAP is setup on custom domain ([email protected]). When I open an email message through my iphone it shows it was read. Then when I go into the mail app on my iMac, it shows the message is unread. It still shows unread hours later and even when I click the "Get Mail" button
How do I make it so that Mac mail syncs when I check mail through other devices?
Thank you

Open Terminal in Utilties and copy/paste
This will send the attachment embedded inline. (This works in Snow Leopard, but not sure about Lion. Do a test first. If it doesn't work, just google "send attachment embedded + Lion." You don't actually have to send the message to see how it will appear.)
defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing 0
To reverse the setting, change the 0 to a 1
However, whether this will work or not will depend on what the e-mail client on the receiver's end does with it.

Missing messages in Mac Mail that appear in my PC Outlook

Ok - this is VERY strange. I recently posted an ad on Craigs List and was surprised to get just a single response. Later in the day I went to my office & on my PC, in outlook, were about 12 emails responding to the posting. Including 3 follow-up emails from the single response I did get on my Mac (in other words I got 1 of the 4 messages the same guy sent on my MacBook). I get email on both computers regularly - everything is redundant as I have messages stay on the server for 21 days so I get all my email in multiple places (I have 3 laptops & a blackberry). I assumed the missing mail would be in the junk folder - NOPE. The mail is no where to be found on my Mac. Had I not looked on my pc for mail I would have missed all the emails - any ideas? BTW - when I go to webmail, all messages are there. I continue to get all other mail throughout the day so mail is sending & receiving just fine.

& it gets better. I looked on my other MacBook Pro with 10.6.3 & in it's mail program contains ALL the missing messages but they were in brown listed as Junk. But at least they were in the list!

Mail loses messages moved into IMAP folders

I use IMAP from a linux server with local synchronisation and "retain local copy" and regularly read email from at least 2 different macs and also using WebMail.
For an IMAP folder to contain subfolders, it cannot also contain mail.
When trying to drag and drop to a folder (rather than a mailbox) Mac Mail correctly disallows the action. Also, when cntrl-clicking and selecting "Move To", if the folder is open (ie already expanded) then the folder is not selectable as a target.
However, if the folder is closed (collapsed) in the drop-down menu, it is possible to move the message into the folder. This is easy to do by accident!
Looking in the local copy of the IMAP folder, I can see that there is now a Messages folder in the folder. For a while, I can find the moved message using a search, but "show in mailbox" gives an empty mailbox. However, this Messages folder is not synchronised onto the IMAP account (as the mailbox format is different on the IMAP server and the local IMAP copy on the mac) and so at some point it is deleted during synchronising with the server and the moved mail message is lost with no warning.
If droppping onto a closed folder were correctly disallowed in the "Move To" contextual menu, this would not happen. I think this must be a bug - is anyone else experiencing this, or is it just me? and is there a way or retrieving messages lost in this way?
iMac (intel) Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Whether it's a bug or not, I'm not sure. It certainly looks like it is, but the way Mail handles mailboxes within mailboxes is more complicate than it seems.
is there a way or retrieving messages lost in this way?
If the cached copy Mail keeps locally is still on your disk, yes. In the Finder, go to HOME/Library/Mail/IMAP-username@mailserver/. How many folders named after the IMAP folder where the messages where dropped do you see there? Is there one with an .imapmbox suffix and another without the suffix, or only one of these?

How to remove duplicate POP messages in Mail under Mavericks

Hello
I'm having some significant problems with Apple Mail, and despite having researched widely, I haven't been able to find a solution yet. Here is my tale of woe...
My set up is that I use Mail with 5 separate accounts, downloading all messages using POP. I keep ALL my mail (even the trash) so that I have a permanent record of all conversations, going back more than 10 years - this is about 250,000 emails in around 250 subfolders. I'm running the latest version of Mavericks on a 2010 MBP. I have no intention of moving to IMAP - I need to keep a local archive of all my mail.
A few months ago I was having problems with Mail being very slow to load and search emails. I decided to rebuild the mailboxes, but afterwards discovered that thousands of messages in the inbox of one of my accounts (and some of the sub-folders) had disappeared. Once I realised I tried to go back to a recent Time Machine back up, but, for whatever reason, that part of the back up hadn't worked properly and I was unable to recover the previous status. I left it while I decided what to do, and had time to deal with it...
The last 2 years worth of emails on that account were still archived on gmail, so last week I decided to try redownloading the whole lot (something like 72,000 messages), and then planned to use one of the scripts I was aware of to remove the duplicates to the trash, and then remove any duplicates in the trash forever. That ought to mean I at least had an archive of the last two years of missing messages, even if I had no record of which ones had been flagged or replied to, etc.
The downloading took about 24 hours to complete, and I now have almost 70,000 messages in the inbox of that account. I also rebuilt all the folders again, which doesn't seem to have resulted in any further loss of messages as far as I can tell. However, I hadn't figured on two things:
1. Mail 'hides' duplicate messages, meaning that all of the messages I've downloaded are showing as unread, and I can't differentiate the ones I already had in my Inbox, and the new downloads. When I click on those apparently unread messages I can see if they have been replied to or forwarded, etc, but there's no obvious way for me to remove the ones I have already dealt with to the trash, without going through them all manually, which is clearly impossible.
2. The scripts I'd found for removing duplicates don't work. Andreas Amann's Remove Duplicates script doesn't work under Mavericks, and he has abandoned the project. I've also tried the remove-duplicate-messages.scpt made by Jolly Roger (http://jollyroger.kicks-***.org/software/), and while it *sometimes* works on individual subfolders on my Mac (but as far as I can tell removes the duplicate in that folder, rather than the newly downloaded version), mostly it doesn't work at all - it creates a 'Remove Duplicate Messages' folder on my desktop, a log inside it and a folder for removed messages, but nothing appears in the duplicates folder.
So, I'm left in a position where I have 70,000 apparently unread messages in my Inbox, a massively bloated Mail library (which has pretty much doubled in size, because of the 'hidden' messages), a slow and unresponsive Mail program. I've come to the conclusion that there must be some corrupted email somewhere, which probably caused the original email haemorrhage, and may still be causing the inability to remove duplicates. Mail is so slow as to be almost unuseable.
I figure I have a number of options:
1. I could live with the situation and just archive most of the Mail in my inbox, with the side effect that there will be a bunch of messages I have never replied to that are missed.
2. I could abandon the last week's efforts and revert to the version of Mail I was using a week ago, and then redownload the recent emails from my various accounts. That would still leave me without those thousands of emails I lost on my local machine.
3. I could find another way to deal with this. Can I get the remove duplicates script working? Should I revert to the version of Mail from a week ago, download ALL the messages again, but do it in a way that allows me to find the duplicates and remove them? Should I move to another email program altogether (which would presumably be massively disruptive to my work!)
Anyway, apologies for the essay length of this request, and thanks in advance for any help you may be able to offer!

hi Eric
thanks for the tip, but I don't think that solves my problem, which is that Mail apparently hides the duplicates, so they're still there, you just can't differentiate or remove them. I actually *need* the duplicates there so I know I've got everything, but then I need to be able to move the ones I know I've dealt with from my inbox to an archive/trash, and/or remove them completely so Mail isn't totally bloated

How to remove duplicate messages from Mail in Mavericks (POP)

Hello
I'm having some significant problems with Apple Mail, and despite having researched widely, I haven't been able to find a solution yet. Here is my tale of woe...
My set up is that I use Mail with 5 separate accounts, downloading all messages using POP. I keep all my mail so that I have a permanent record of all conversations, going back more than 10 years - this is about 250,000 emails. I'm running the latest version of Mavericks on a 2010 MBP. I have no intention of moving to IMAP - I need to keep a local archive of all my mail.
A few months ago I was having problems with Mail being very slow to load and search emails. I decided to rebuild the mailboxes, but afterwards discovered that thousands of messages in the inbox of one of my accounts (and some of the sub-folders) had disappeared. Once I realised I tried to go back to a recent Time Machine back up, but, for whatever reason, that part of the back up hadn't worked properly and I was unable to recover the previous status. Ileft it while I decided what to do, and had time to deal with it.
The last 2 years worth of emails on that account were still archived on gmail, so last week I decided to try redownloading the whole lot (something like 72,000 messages), and then uplanned to use one of the scripts I was aware of to remove the duplicates to the trash, and then remove any duplicates in the trash forever. That ought to mean I at least had an archive of the last two years of missing messages, even if I had no record of which ones had been flagged or replied to, etc.
The downloading took about 24 hours to complete, and I now have almost 70,000 messages in the inbox of that account. However, I hadn't figured on two things:
1. Mail 'hides' duplicate messages, meaning that all of the messages I've downloaded are showing as unread, and I can't differentiate the ones I already had in my Inbox, and the new downloads. When I click on those apparently unread messages I can see if they have been replied to or forwarded, etc, but there's no obvious way for me to remove the ones I have already dealt with to the trash, without going through them all manually, which is clearly impossible.
2. The scripts I'd found for removing duplicates don't work. Andreas Amann's Remove Duplicates script doesn't work under Mavericks, and he has abandoned the project. I've also tried the remove-duplicate-messages.scpt made by Jolly Roger (http://jollyroger.kicks-***.org/software/), and while it *sometimes* works on individual subfolders on my Mac (but as far as I can tell removes the duplicate in that folder, rather than the newly downloaded version), mostly it doesn't work at all - it creates a 'Remove Duplicate Messages' folder on my desktop, a log inside it and a folder for removed messages, but nothing appears in the duplicates folder.
So, I'm left in a position where I have 70,000 apparently unread messages in my Inbox, a massively bloated Mail library (which has pretty much doubled in size), a slow and unresponsive Mail program. I figure I have a number of options. Either I could abandon the last week's efforts and revert to the version of

Apologies, this was posted here in error. Please find updated post here: https://discussions.apple.com/message/27261965#27261965

How to reinsert missing messages

Greetings,
I use a PowerBook Pro (Intel) running OS 10.4.9. I also use dot Mac and have my e-mail set as IMAP. About a week ago, there was some issue with dot Mac that resulted in some missing e-mail.
I have a backup, but I do not use the Apple backup software; instead, I just copy my entire user folder to my external LaCie drive. I have located my mail folder and found the missing messages. When I click on one of them, the mail application opens so I can read it, but I cannot save it into a folder within Mail. I can copy the missing e-mails to the folder location on the hard drive, but the mail does not show up, and I cannot use import because it says the file type is not recognized.
How can I get my e-mail back into the Mail program? Please Help!
Power Book Pro Mac OS X (10.4.9)

Hello Ricky & Judy.
You can restore those messages by importing the mailboxes from the backup. Problem is, Mail cannot import cached server-stored *.imapmbox mailboxes directly; only locally stored *.mbox mailboxes.
However, if Preferences > Accounts > Advanced > Keep copies of messages for offline viewing is set to All messages and their attachments (the default setting), then Mail 2.x caches server-stored mailboxes using the exact same format it uses for locally stored mailboxes, except the suffix of the mailbox folder in the filesystem is .imapmbox instead of .mbox.
Hence, if Keep copies of messages for offline viewing was set to All messages and their attachments throughout the lifetime of the mailboxes (or since before the last rebuild), *.imapmbox mailboxes can be imported back into Mail as if they were locally stored mailboxes by just renaming them so that the suffix is .mbox instead of .imapmbox — note that this wasn’t the case in Mail 1.x; that version used entirely different formats for *.mbox and *.imapmbox mailboxes.
Note also that, after doing File > Import Mailboxes and choosing Mail for Mac OS X, Mail wants you to select the folder that contains the mailboxes to be imported (i.e. the folder where the *.mbox folders to be imported reside), not the *.mbox folders themselves nor the Messages folders within them. If you select the wrong folder, Mail says “No valid Mail for Mac OS X files were found” because it cannot find any *.mbox folders within the folder you’re selecting.

Missing messages in Mail (IMAP)

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