Sent mail disappears

Sometimes when I send mail it does not appear in the Sent folder. This is really annoying because I have no copy of the email to send it again, and have to check with the recipient to see if they got it. It happens fairly regularly but I haven't noticed any particular pattern.
Lost mail does not appear in Mail on my Mac or on the MobileMe web version.
Does anyone else get this problem? Any clues as to what might be going on? Seems a fairly fatal flaw for an email application.
Message was edited by: Mike Howells

sorry, wrong place to post, should have been on 10.4 support forum

Similar Messages

Local iPhone sent mail disappeared

I have been keeping the draft, trash, and sent mail items generated by the iPhone on the iPhone. That is, I have not been storing them on the .Mac server. So I go to retrieve a message I sent a couple of days ago but find that there are only 25 messages in the Sent mailbox, and no "download 25 more" message at the end of the list. I had a thought and sent myself a test message from the iPhone, and the test appeared at the top of the Sent list and bumped the oldest message...into oblivion? I tried deleting the test to see if the old message would reappear to make an even 25 again, but no luck.
I moved the remaining 24 sent messages to the server and changed the setting so now everything is stored there, but a couple of months worth of sent items are...deleted? hiding on the iPhone? They are not on my Mac or in .Mac anywhere that I can find them. Any ideas? I had never heard of this 25 recent message limit in Sent on the iPhone. Apple phone support was not very supportive.
Ry

the iPad Mail programme has never been able (not in my opinion is it ever likely) to create folders in Mail - it will replicate what exists on the Mail server, so one creates them there and the iPad and any other devices 'follow' it.
The sent folder has not disappeared on any of my devices so something appears to be in error.
How is the email account set up - POP3 or IMAP ?
Have you tried sending a mail from the iPad and seeing if the folder reappears ?

Sent mails disappeared

Hello,
i configurate my fathers system since about 10 years.
But now I'dont now what I have to do.
He says that his mails he sent aren't in his "sent mail folder".
What has happend and what I have to do to fix that?
Thanks,
Alex

Don't know if this is any help. Several weeks ago began to think a few of my emails were disappearing - In, Out, Sent or Trash. Couple of weeks ago I left my iMac offline with Mail and a draft email on screen. Came back to find all emails deleated except the draft. Click on Mail screen and the draft disappeared!
Came to Apple discussions and found items dated a year or more with no Answers provided. One suggested check User/Library/Mail/Mailbox for something. Not much there but did see a couple of .plist. For some reason I trashed those and went to Mail settings where I had mailboxes set to delete each week or month. Set all to Never. Have had no disappearing emails since then.
Recently checked Trash for something and found several Recovered emails. Have no idea where those came from. I do have TechTool Pro but did not run Recover Files. Ain't technology just great, or what?

IPad aol sent mail disappeared

I sent a message through aol mail on my ipad. When I wanted to retrieve it to send to someone else, I clicked on "sent mail" and it disappeared. Where did it go? What did I do wrong? It's not on my computer or my ipad. How can I get it back?

Where it went I cannot answer. If your AOL account is set up as IMAP - if it is deleted from one device - it will be deleted from all of your devices - IMAP syncs across all devices.
You can check your webmail account in aol.com, but I am pretty sure it will not be there either.

Sent Mail Disappeared!

Help! I tried to access my "Sent Mail" folder this morning and all messages are GONE. I read through the earlier posts, and didn't get anywhere because I don't have a "Mail" folder in my Library folder.
Yesterday I did a bunch of upgrades, included to OS 10.3.9 and downloaded the Daylight Saving Time patch for OS 10.3.9. I can't imagine that could have caused this.
In the past, sometimes when I went to the sent mail folder I received the same message referred to in the earlier post about how message had not been downloaded from the server yet. But, I always just shut Mail down and restarted and all was fine.
What now? Are my e-mails gone forever???

Well, if you’re using Apple Mail, sure there is a Mail folder in ~/Library/. If you don’t see it there, you’re almost certainly looking in the wrong folder, i.e. /Library/ (the Library folder at the root level of the startup disk) instead of ~/Library/ (the Library folder within your Library folder).
Anyway, if you’re running Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther), you probably have the problem described here:
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
You should have addressed this problem when it started to happen, though. It’s probably too late now to solve it doing what the article suggests.
Because of the differences between Mail 1.x and Mail 2.x, further discussing your problem here might confuse other users with similar problems using Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), so please start a new topic in the Mail & Address Book - Mac OS X 10.3 & earlier forum, or just look for other threads discussing the same problem. This is actually a FAQ in that forum.

SOME (not all) sent mail disappearing

This is a strange one. As of a couple of days ago, if I send a new message it doesn't appear in my Sent mail. But if I reply to someone else's message, it does.
The only thing I had changed was the email address on my account to match the ISP server (this was on the advice of the IT support staff at my workplace who said that was probably the reason so many of my messages sent from home were ending up in the spam filter).
I just changed it back again to my work address and sent a test email and there it was in my Sent mail.
What's going on? Advice welcome.

This is a strange one. As of a couple of days ago, if
I send a new message it doesn't appear in my Sent
mail. But if I reply to someone else's message, it
does.
The only thing I had changed was the email address on
my account to match the ISP server (this was on the
advice of the IT support staff at my workplace who
said that was probably the reason so many of my
messages sent from home were ending up in the spam
filter).
I just changed it back again to my work address and
sent a test email and there it was in my Sent mail.
What's going on? Advice welcome.
I've been having a similar problem but it is not limited to any one type of mail (new or reply) NOT being saved to my "Sent" box. It started on 29May and I went through the usual trouble shooting AND called AppleCare and Sean took me through it all again but the problem continues. He believed it was a dotmac problem. My son is now having the same problem. In the last couple of hours I've sent about 20 e-mails (some new, some reply) and about half have been saved to the Sent box and have have not but I have evidence that they were sent and received.
kay

Sent mails disappeared in mail.app [4.2] randomely

hi there,
today it happened twi times. I sent mails, heard the sent-sound, but the mails didn't appear in »sent mails«.
I'm on IMAP under SL. What's the problem? Is it an IMAP problem? Is it an Apple mail.app problem? Both?
Please help, if possible. Now I always have to check the »sent mails« if the mails have gone through.
All the best!

Do you have good authority that SSL works with this server?
*I don’t really understand. If you mean, that the mail server is provided for ssl, yes it is.*
Control-click on the Inbox of this one IMAP account and choose Get Account Info. Does the first tab (Quota Limits) come up with names of all folder and number of messages within each?
*yes, there are all folders.*
Is there only one Sent folder listed?
yes.
Does the number of messages it is reported to contain agree with number for the Sent as seen in the regular Mail window?
*the sent information in the mail.app regular window shows 2479 outgoing mails. The information you mentioned shows 2503 outgoing mails. And the incoming mails are 2824, the information with ctrl-click shows 2951 mails.*
If you click on the Mailbox Behaviors tab, does that info agree with what would be seen with Mail Preferences/Accounts/Mailbox Behaviors?
yes.
Have you ever taken any action to force reindexing?
no.
Michael

Sent mail disappears from Sent folder - VERY ANNOYING!

Sometimes when I send mail it does not appear in the Sent folder, or appears very briefly before disappearing.
This is really annoying because I have no copy of the email to send it again, and have to check with the recipient to see if they got it. It happens fairly regularly but I haven't noticed any particular pattern. The lost mail does not appear in Mail on my Mac or on the MobileMe web version. Sometimes it reappears later on.
Does anyone else get this problem? Any clues as to what might be going on? Seems a fairly fatal flaw for an email application.

Hi Mike,
Here's what I would do...
Safe Boot , (holding Shift key down at bootup), off the HD & use Disk Utility from there to Repair Permissions.
In your Home folder. open Library folder, open Mail folder in that, look for the Envelope Index, and drag it to the Desktop.
Then in your Home folder. open Library folder, open Caches folder in that, look for the Mail, and drag it to the Desktop.Move Envelope Index to the Desktop in...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index
Move this folder to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail
Reboot.

Sent mail disappears in iOS 5.1

I've got a user with an iPad3, iOS 5.1. When in an area with little/spotty reception, emails he sends just disappear. No Outbox, not in Sent folder, never reaches the addressee.
I was able to recreate the problem. It only happens when connection is spotty. If there is no connection at all or in airplane mode mail queues up in the Outbox like it should.
I saw a few posts re: this issue in iOS4, but nothing specifically about iOS5. Does anyone have any more info or a solution they could share?

I've had several users report this particular issue and all have occured at airport terminals. In reading Microsoft's ActiveSync protocol specification here, it seems as if these WiFi configurations at airport terminals are responding in such a way which is "tricking" the iPad/iPhone into thinking that the message was sent. Here are the details of the SendMail request/reponse fromt he protocol spec:
Request
POST /Microsoft-Server-ActiveSync?Cmd=SendMail&User=fakeusername&DeviceId=v140Device &DeviceType=SmartPhone HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/vnd.ms-sync.wbxml
MS-ASProtocolVersion: 14.0
X-MS-PolicyKey: 2034202722
User-Agent: ASOM
Host: BIRSKK-dom.extest.microsoft.com
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<SendMail
xmlns="ComposeMail:">
<ClientId>633724606026842453</ClientId>
<Mime>From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Cc:
Bcc:
Subject: From NSync
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2900.3350
This is the body text.</Mime>
</SendMail>
Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
s
Date: Thu, 12 Mar 2009 20:16:22 GMT
Content-Length: 0
As you can see from the response side of things, it is very simple to "trick" the device into thinking that the message was successfully sent.

Sent Mail Disappearing

Today I happily worked through hundreds of e-mails, sending replies. When I went later to my Sent Box the last two hours or so of mail sent was not there, in either Sent Account I was using (I use two accounts).
My HD is not full, it has 20GB free
The Sent Mailboxes in either account are not that large, 50-80MB
I remembered a few of the people to whom I had sent so I did a Spotlight search for the precise sent address, like [email protected] and I found several of those mails, in fact copies of them in draft, like part of a message, then the full message. I can open them and there they are, but when I ask for Info on them no location shows up. I can't find where they are or where they went and I am now wondering if they were even sent. I don't recall hearing the little swoosh sound that indicates a send, but not sure about this.
My guess is that they went into some kind of draft-type box, but they are not showing in my Drafts boxes for either account.
I really need to find these as they contain responses that I need to file and save.
Any ideas?

Index corruption, which is what appears to have happened to you, can happen for a variety of reasons, such as software bugs, power outages, filesystem corruption, etc. You may want to re-create the entire index, as follows.
Verify/repair the startup disk (not just permissions), as described here:
The Repair functions of Disk Utility: what's it all about?
After having fixed all filesystem issues, if any, and making sure that there’s enough space available on the startup disk (a few GB, plus the space needed to make a backup copy of the Mail folder), try this:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/. 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. This is where all your mail is stored.
3. Locate Envelope Index and move it to the Trash. If you see an Envelope Index-journal file there, delete it as well.
4. Open Mail. It will tell you that your mail needs to be “imported”. Click Continue and Mail will proceed to re-create Envelope Index -- Mail says it’s “importing”, but it just re-creates the index if the mailboxes are already in Mail 2.x format.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder, i.e. ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder.

Sent mails disappear?

hi, i recently set up am IMAP account on mail on another iMac (1st gen intel iMac 17"). this mac is running tiger 10.4.11 since creating the new IMAP account all mails sent do not appear in the sent folder. only the mails sent before the upgrade. i also set up a GMX account (as POP3) and these mails also do not appear.
the mails do get sent and are received.
has anyone had this problem or can anyone point me at a solution?
thanks!

Hi Frank,
Not certain, but this can fix myriad Mail problems...
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), it will try to repair your Disk Directory while the spinning radian is happening, so let it go, run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move these folder & file to the Desktop.
Move this Folder to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/
Move this file to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index
Reboot.
If that doesn't do it and you can afford to redo all your Rules, try these & reboot...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist.backup

Recover SENT mail after account deletion?

We changed ISP, created new accounts (successful), then deleted accounts from the old ISP. The "sent" mail disappeared. Is it possible to recover it?

Deleting a mail account causes all your mail stored in that account’s mailboxes to be removed from the computer as well, and you were warned that this would happen by the following alert:
Remove Account
Are you sure you want to remove the <AccountType> account "<AccountName>"?
This will permanently delete the account setup information, mailboxes, and messages from your computer. Messages stored on the mail server will not be affected.For IMAP-type accounts, this is not a problem because mail is stored on the server. If you deleted a POP account, however, your mail has certainly been wiped out from the computer, not just moved somewhere.
To prevent that from happening, you should have moved your mail to custom “On My Mac” mailboxes instead of leaving it in the account’s mailboxes. Actually, using the account’s Inbox and Sent mailboxes for archiving purposes is a bad idea regardless.
If you don’t have a backup (which you should have made before doing something like that), you may try to salvage as many deleted .emlx files as possible with a data recovery tool such as Data Rescue II or FileSalvage. Of these, the only one I know for sure that can currently recover deleted .emlx files is FileSalvage. Stop using your computer right now if you want to try that, as anything you do with the computer may cause the deleted files to be overwritten.

Restoring Sent Mail from a crash

Hi,
I was cleaning up (removing large files) from my Sent mail that resides on my Mac. I clicked out of it and the remembered I needed to find a recently sent email.
So, I clicked back it while the wheel was still spinning and it crashed. All the sent mail disappeared. I rebooted but it did not index any mail. The folder now houses only today's sent mail. It used to go back to 2005 and is my bible.
However, my Libraries/Mail/Mailboxes/Sent Messages (XXXX).mbox still has 857 MB. So the sent mail is still there but not registering. Or so it appears.
Any thoughts on how to restore it? Thanks!
Paul

Hi Paul,
First of all, Welcome to the Apple Discussion Forums!
I'm sure you probably realize that you were very close to the stated limit for the size of a mailbox (I think the limit is 1GB).
I'm not a Mail expert by any stretch but what happens if you quit Mail.app and then double click on the Sent Messages.mbox? Does Mail.app open and show the sent mail again?
If that doesn't do it, do you have the option to Rebuild the mailbox with Mail.app open from the Mailbox Menu?
If Mail.app freezes up while attempting either of these two approaches you should be able to use the Force Quit keyboard command (command + option + escape).
LS

Sent Email Disappeared

Hi all,
I did a reset of my iPhone this morning (Press-hold the Home button and the Sleep/Wake button simultaneously until the grey Apple logo appears) as it has been acting a bit funny (apps slow to open/close, apps opening by themselves).
I have reset my phone before with good results. Today was no different with one exception, my sent mail disappeared when I went to check my email. The other thing is all my incoming email was marked "unread". I let the incoming email load (about 80 or so messages) and checked them. They were fine. All my outgoing email was gone. I sent a test email to myself, received it and my sent mail folder was back; albeit with only one email inside.
Does anyone know if I can recover my sent email?
thanks in advance,
Brian

Sounds like you are using POP mail and possible sluggishness was mail app getting corrupt with your data in some way.
You may not recall but when you first set up the account on the phone you don't have the sent and outbox folders. They show up after something is sent or what not.
While POP is functional, it was never designed for today's age of multiple devices checking the same box. It doesn't actually sync but rather gets copies and copies on your end don't get sent back to the server. This is why many prefer IMAP or Exchange accounts.

My SENT mailbox is empty on my computer, mail up til yesterday is on mobileme on browser. I used to have 'my .mac account' and 'on my computer' as mailboxes. 'On my computer' has disappeared. HOW can I restore my SENT mail list? tnx

any help or suggestions would be most welcome. The contents of my sent box disappeared once before, but came back after relaunching. Not this time.
tnx eliza

Thanks, Chris ~
Sync has not worked (yet) ~
I'll try archiving from mobileme mail on browser... I can't open the SENT mailbox on TIme Machine on my computer. [It's not the end of the world to lose my Sent Mail, bcz it is still availble via brwoser, but I prefer to be in charge of my computer, not it in charge of me :-D]
So much to learn!

Sent mail disappears

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