Old Mail in inbox disappeared

This morning when I opened up my mail application all my mail that was received prior to today disappeared. I have mobileme and all the mail is still in my web mobileme mailbox.
Why is it not displayed in my inbox on my computer? I just got my iMac a couple of weeks ago (I am a new mac user, previously owned PC) and have not set up an archive settings in Time Machine, so I don't have an archive folder to look in.
Any ideas in what happened? Is there a setting that somehow changed that i don't know about?

This is probably an indexing problem as 2pointS suggests, but may not be beyond what Rebuild of one or two mailboxes can fix. But when purging the Envelope Index while using an IMAP style account, see:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mail/3.0/en/14019.html
Take note of the methodology when IMAP accounts are involved. For peace of mind, you might make a duplicate of the Mail folder (Home/Library/Mail) and drag the resulting copy to the Desktop for temporary backup.
Ernie

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IPhone mail app - inbox disappears once i go into message

Not sure what's going on here, but suddenly this morning on my iPhone 3G running latest software as soon as I go into an email message to read it, all access to my inbox is suddenly shut off. There's no "next/previous message" buttons nor a "back to inbox" option. There is just the message. All I can do is move it to a diff folder or trash it and then it still just brings me back to the next message (older, not even newer). I got back to my inbox by turning off mail in settings then turning account back on again. But as soon as I was back in inbox and opened up a message I was right back in the bad loop.
Has this happened to anyone? Did I finger swipe an option off by accident?
Thanks in advance for any ideas...

There is no option that provides for this.
If there is a problem with an account's mailbox, turning the account off does not remove the mailboxes for the account. Doing so prevents the mailboxes for the account from being available along with not being able to receive or send any messages with the account.
Try deleting and recreating the account on your iPhone.

I have old QuickMail Pro on my old iMac OS 9. Can Quick Mail's inbox, outbox and sent mail be downloaded onto an external hard drive?

I have QuickMail Pro on my old iMac OS 9. Can Quick Mail's inbox, outbox and sent mail be downloaded onto an external hard drive? If so, how? I tried to drag and drop but that didn't work.

Ok, best to contact itunes then so they can look into it

Items in my mail inbox disappeared.

Items in my mail inbox disappeared. I tried a rebuild but nothing happened. Any suggestions how to get the inbox populated again? Thanks.

I had the same problem and your mail isn't lost forever. It's still sitting on the server in California. Here is what I had to do to get mail back up and running..... I had to go to mail preferences and delete my account and then reset it. It was a bit of a chance but I had already backed up my system before upgrading to 10.5 so I wasn't too concerned. My reset worked beautifully and all of my mail came back up in a matter of seconds. In my case there seemed to be an error in outgoing server recognition and once I reset it all was well. Hope this helps and good luck!

Mail.app multiple acct all items in inbox disappeared without a trace

Mail.app with multiple acct all items in inbox disappeared without a trace
iCould account
gmail account
exchange account
In all accounts, the Inbox contents totally disappeared, gone without a trace. Inbox shows 0MB used for each account. The trash had stuff in it but it didn't have the inbox items. Get Account Info shows all the other folders have items but nothing the side of the inbox. What was werid was my mac was running slow even with an SSD things were crawling. I noticed mail Activity window was processing but thought it standard processing, updating inbox etc.

Well thank goodness for time machine. I was in mail app and clicked on time machine I was able to recover 2 inboxes, one with ~3400 and other with ~1800 messages. However, time machine is now stuck for over 12 hours on 30,682 messages. I was able to go back to a few days ago, it loaded all the messages. I was then able to select all of them (I pressed cmd-a) and in a few hours it was then able to process the select all and show me the restore button much like the other two small mail boxes. But its been stuck at the "Click Restore to recover the 30682 selected messages" screen. The 12+ hours its been busy hammering away at the disk and CPU. From what I can see, it may just be trying to process it all. The previous two smaller restores worked so I'm hoping this one works too.

On a morning woke up and inbox empty of old mails - 100s. Can scan and find some but no idea what happened. First time.

I can send and receive email but on a morning inbox was empty except for items received that night. I can search and find old emails but inbox virtually empty. Never happened before and i certainly did not knowing do anything. Hope someone can help. Thank you

Hey!
I have tried holding down the home and power button countless of times. It doesnt respond at all. Plug my phone to a charger and hold down the power button and my phone switched on. But it said Activation Required and said connect to Itunes. As e screen remains on the connect to Itunes screen, I disconnect the charger from my phone and my phone went dead instantly. My battery is full btw. Tried connecting to Itunes through my Macbook Pro but iTunes doesnt detect my device and the apple logo flashes for about a few seconds on my phone and then disappear and then came back on again. My Iphone has been connected to my laptop for about 30 mins and the apple logo has been coming on and off for 30 minutes now and Itunes has not detect my device yet.
SIGHHH.

How can I get my old mail account back?

I f&%€ up and deleted my old mail account after I had added my new one ( I've changed ISP). So all old mails disappeared.
Is it possible to restore them my self? Or do I have to go to the Mac doctor?
I'm greatful for all help

Hi John and thank you.
I use Mail.
I deleted the settings for the old account by mistake - I just thought I wouldn't need it anymore after having set up the new one - and suddenly the inbox was empty. A not so nice surprise
However I managed to find a folder named Mail with a POP - folder in it, in the trash can, which I dragged to my desktop. But I haven't been able to import it.
I found some useful earlier threads and intructions from some David Gimeno, so I removed the .mbox extension from the INBOX.mbox file.
BUT still, Mail won't import. It says it doesn't find any valid mbox files.
The INBOX.mbox is about 12 Mb, so I recconed there would be something in it.
/Ellem

How do I easily access archived old Mail?

I have over 5000 emails in my Mail Inbox folders, over 9000 in my Sent folders. I am worried that at some point it will be too many and the Mail storage system would become corrupted. I would like to archive out the older emails, but still have easy access to them.
The instructions for archiving mail is to archive entire folders. I could move old email to a like named mailbox and then archive all the old ones together. I would have to reimport them to look at them though. Back to square 1 and a mess to redo just to see one old email.
Sooo. If a created a user account with a different login, could I import that old mail archive into that user account's mail and have it available with a simple relogin? Would the old email find it's way via some hidden id number back into the original Mail program? That is, would the two instances of Mail be completely independent even if the emails had the same originating instance?
Also, is there a way to have two users logged into one computer without losing performance?

It doesn't matter what folder it is in, all the mail is in Mail. How many mails can Mail track before it loses it's cohesion and starts dropping them? All DB software has it's limits, and this is Mail (free) in 10.6, not Oracle. There's a reason Mail has a rebuild mailbox command. Look it up and it will tell you to run it when messages disappear. With about 20000 emails I am concerned. I would also just like to reduce the number of results I have when searching without loosing access to old emails because I may need them.
This is for a business and the volume of new email increases every year as processes go from local and paper to remote and electronic. I do not want to switch to Windows.
Thank you for your response.

Loss of old mail for Pop mailboxes

Recently I had to force my Powerbook G4 to shutdown as it refused to do so on its own. When I turned it back on the next day, all my mail preferences were gone! I had to completely reconfigure my mailboxes (specifically I use two gmail addresses). Now, however, I am receiving and sending mail with no problem, but I don't have my old mail in Mail. When I go to Library, the messages are still there (they're both POP accounts), so I know they're not deleted. I've tried Importing these mailboxes, but I never seem to get the fabled Import Mailbox when I do so. I'm sorry if this is unclear, I'm at a loss for a better, clearer way to explain. Ultimately, I just want my old mail, both sent and in my inbox to reappear in the Mail Application so I can use that wonderful search feature.

You're welcome.
I just tried removing the [email protected] folder
(keeping a back up copy). I deleted the account and set
it up again, hoping it would reimport my mail from the
gmail server (I'm desperate...), nothing happened.
This is because Gmail only allows messages to be downloaded once with a POP client.
I've still got the copy of the mail, so no worries there.
OK. We'll bring your mail back into Mail, don't worry about that. If the old account folders are no longer in ~/Library/Mail/, do File > Import Mailboxes, choose Mail for Mac OS X as the data format, and select the account folders from the backup (one at a time). Note that you must select the folder that contains the mailboxes (i.e. the account folder), not the mailboxes themselves.
If the old account folders were still in ~/Library/Mail/, the procedure would be different. Let me know if that's the case.
At this point, I can live without my messages.
That ain't gonna happen...
But do you have any idea what would cause
my preferences in multiple programs to disappear?
Lack of available disk space, power outages, filesystem corruption...
Verify/repair your disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
You may also want to take a look at the following article:
Problems from insufficient RAM and free hard disk space

I just purchased the new ipad. I set up my email and put show 1000 messages. After a few days my email in my inbox disappears. I have gone thought all the settings. Please help.

I just purchased the new ipad. I set up my email and put show 1000 messages. After a few days my email in my inbox disappears. I have gone thought all the settings. Please help.

iPad Mail
http://www.apple.com/support/ipad/mail/
 Cheers, Tom

Email in the inbox disappears without doing anything to delete it

The email in the inbox disappears without doing anything to delete it. Should have received at least seven emails today but only one when I opened it then it disappeared after about thirty minutes. sent mail is still in sent box. Settings seam to be the same as my other email address which works gust fine.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Disappearing_mail

Mail - restore inbox

I have 2 problems:
1 - I have sopped pulling mail from my pop account in the last week. I have verified that I don't have a password problem. I've gone to the ISP web site and seen that I have 150+ mails there. When Mail checks for messages it lists the number of messages but does not pull them. I've removed and re-added the account but this did not resolve my problem. In fact is led to this problem.....
2 - All the mail in my inbox disappeared when I removed & re-added my account information. If I go into Time Machine what do I need to restore to get those messages back?
Thanks for the time & help.
Cj
Message was edited by: Host

I have 2 problems:
1 - I have sopped pulling mail from my pop account in the last week. I have verified that I don't have a password problem. I've gone to the ISP web site and seen that I have 150+ mails there. When Mail checks for messages it lists the number of messages but does not pull them. I've removed and re-added the account but this did not resolve my problem. In fact is led to this problem.....
2 - All the mail in my inbox disappeared when I removed & re-added my account information. If I go into Time Machine what do I need to restore to get those messages back?
Thanks for the time & help.
Cj
Message was edited by: Host

Purging Old Mail Messages

I'm currently playing around with purging old mail messages after a certain time period. For test I've set inbox and sent at 7 days and trash at 1 day.
I've read: http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-4428/6n6j4267s?a=view
Quite useful. I've set a global purge with the following:
Rule1.regexp: 1
Rule1.folderpattern: user/.*/trash
Rule1.messagedays: 1
Rule2:regexp: 1
Rule2.folderpattern: user/.*/inbox
Rule2.messagedays: 7
Rule3.regexp: 1
Rule3.folderpattern: user/.*/sent
Rule3.messagedays: 7
Rule4.regexp: 1
Rule4.folderpattern: user/.*/Trash
Rule4.messagedays: 1
Rule5:regexp: 1
Rule5.folderpattern: user/.*/Inbox
Rule5.messagedays: 7
Rule6.regexp: 1
Rule6.folderpattern: user/.*/Sent
Rule6.messagedays: 7
Rule7.regexp: 1
Rule7.folderpattern: user/.*/Deleted Items
Rule7.messagedays: 1
It seems to purge the trash ok but no action on the inbox or sent yet. Any ideas?
My version is: libimta.so 6.2-7.05 (built 12:18:44, Sep 5 2006)
Thanks

I'd created about three weeks of a messages on this server prior to turning on the purge so they should be all legitimate messages and dates.
I ran a /imexpire -n -d -v 3
a snippet of the output. Seems to have deleted messages from the Sent and Trash but for some reason Inbox is left untouched. Sent has the exact same messagedays of 7 too.
user/s0243714/INBOX: exists (180) largest (102058) oldest (1192828919) qused (1117436)
applying ExpireRule: user/s0243714/INBOX
     Rule2: regexp: 1
     Rule5: regexp: 1
     Rule8: regexp: 1
     Action: discard
user/s0243714/INBOX: deleted 0 messages
user/s0243714/Sent: exists (10) largest (0) oldest (0) qused (32778)
applying ExpireRule: user/s0243714/Sent
     MessageDays: 7
     Rule2: regexp: 1
     Rule5: regexp: 1
     Rule8: regexp: 1
     Action: discard
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 33
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 34
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 35
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 36
deleting user/s0243714/Sent UID 37
user/s0243714/Sent: deleted 5 messages
user/s0243714/Trash: exists (4) largest (0) oldest (0) qused (16220)
applying ExpireRule: user/s0243714/Trash
     MessageDays: 1
     Rule2: regexp: 1
     Rule5: regexp: 1
     Rule8: regexp: 1
     Action: discard
deleting user/s0243714/Trash UID 16
user/s0243714/Trash: deleted 1 messages

Archiving old mail messages

I am trying to archive old mail messages so they do not cram up my inbox. In the past I have successfully created a new mailbox for old messages, given it a month and year, and dragged messages across – but I can no longer do this.
When I try to drag a message across, I get the message 'Error: the message "xxx" could not be moved to the mailbox "xxx" - On My Mac". Can anyone help me out?
Not being able to archive old messages means that I have hundreds of already read messages in the inbox which causes, I think, another problem. Every time I open the mail program and click on an unread message, I am told that "The message has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it". When I quit the mail program and go back in, the problem sorts itself, but this happens every time I check the mail and it is becoming quite frustrating!
Happy New Year to you all!
Regards, Mike
iMac Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Does the same occur when using the Move To or Copy To command instead of dragging messages manually?
Every time I open the mail program and click on an unread message,
I am told that "The message has not been downloaded from the server.
You need to take this account online in order to download it".
This indicates an "overstuffed" mailbox issue which means the mailbox has approached or exceeded 1 GB in size (which is the recommended mailbox size limit for Jaguar and Panther Mail) or has some corruption.
An "overstuffed" mailbox issue can occur at any mailbox size but is more likely to occur as a mailbox approaches or exceeds 1 GB in size for Jaguar or Panther Mail.
Although your OS detail provided indicates you are running 10.3.9, you posted in the Mail & Address Book - Tiger discussions so I'm assuming you are running 10.3.9 and not Tiger.
Quit the Mail.app first and using the Finder go to Home > Library > Mail > this POP account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account) > INBOX.mbox.
Move the INBOX.mbox to the Desktop.
When relaunching Mail, a new INBOX.mbox will be created automatically by Mail within the account named folder. This will allow the Mail.app to function properly again and not risk losing any existing messages or new messages downloaded by the account while working on the old INBOX.mbox moved to the Desktop to recover the existing messages.
Control-click on the old INBOX.mbox moved to the Desktop and at the menu window that appears, select Show Package Contents.
Post back here listing the package content file names and size of each.

I do not want to lose mail previous to today, help keep some of old mail.

It seems as though previous mail to today is gone. I do not want to lose old mail. How do I keep it?

There are plenty of possible reasons why mail may disappear. The article lists a number of steps to determine what may have happened. So you'll have to go through the steps and check what happened in your case.
If you get stuck, you can ask here. Please be specific.

Old Mail in inbox disappeared

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