Very old 'Sent' mail missing from mailbox - help?

I've got a question about (really) old mail in my Sent mailbox. I went today to look for some very old messages (around 9/2001), and the earliest mail available to me is from Jan 1, 2003.
Does Mail archive or delete mail after it passes a certain age?
If so, how can I find my old mail?
Jim

Jim, I had thought that if you select Never as time after which sent mesages are deleted that they would stay saved on your hard drive.

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Hi APK25,
If your Sent messages aren't showing up where you expect them to, you may want to take a look at the following article:
Mail (Mountain Lion): If messages aren’t stored where expected on the mail server
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH11810
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Mail missing from "Sent Mail" folder.

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Inbox Mail Missing from Upgrade to Tiger

I've just upgraded (Archive and Install) to 10.4.6 from 10.3.9. Everything seems ok, but I'm missing all of my old mail. All of my old SENT, DRAFT and TRASH mail is there, but only mail from today is in the INBOX.
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This is a known issue. The conversion from Mail 1.x to Mail 2.x is broken. Take a look at the following thread to better understand the problem:
Help! "You need to take this account online in order to download it."
In particular, you may want to take a look at the following article (also referenced in that thread) to learn what you might have done before upgrading to minimize the risk of this happening, and what you may do after fixing the problem to avoid similar issues from happening in the future. DON'T do now what the article suggests, though, as that would make things worse in the current situation:
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
More specifically, if this is a POP account, the following procedure should allow you to fix the Inbox problems:
1. Quit Mail.
2. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something goes wrong while trying to fix the problem. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is stored.
3. Create a new folder on the Desktop and name it however you wish (e.g. Inbox Old). It doesn't need to have an .mbox extension.
4. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox/.
5. Move the files mbox and Incoming_Mail out of INBOX.mbox, into the Inbox Old folder just created on the Desktop. These files contain all the messages that were in the mailbox before the upgrade to Tiger, and maybe even some messages that had been deleted. mbox is the most important. Incoming_Mail may or may not be present.
6. Move any strangely-named Messages-XXXXXX folder to the Desktop (not into the Inbox Old folder). These folders are to be deleted after fixing the problem. They are temporary folders created during an import or an indexing process, and Mail should have deleted them when done. Their presence is a clear indication that something didn't work as expected. If you've been using Mail after the conversion and have already tried to fix the problem by rebuilding the mailbox or something like that, they might contain messages that are neither in Messages proper nor in the mbox file, so keep them around until the problem is fixed.
7. Move everything else within INBOX.mbox, except the Messages folder, to the Trash.
The result of the above should be that INBOX.mbox contains the proper Messages folder only, and the Inbox Old folder on the Desktop contains the mbox and Incoming_Mail (if it exists) files only. Now, proceed as follows:
8. Open Mail.
9. The account's Inbox should properly display in Mail as many messages as *.emlx files are in ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox/Messages/. If that's not the case, select the mailbox in Mail and do Mailbox > Rebuild.
10. In Mail, do File > Import Mailboxes, choose Other as the data format, and follow the instructions to import the Inbox Old folder that's on the Desktop. Do with the imported mail whatever you wish. You may move to the account's Inbox the messages that Mail failed to convert properly, and delete those that did get through and, hence, are duplicates now.
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If all is well and you're not missing anything, the files on the Desktop can be deleted, although you may want to keep them for a while, just in case.
Ask for any clarifications or if you need further assistance.
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How to download the "Sent Mail" folder from Gmail to Mail 4.1?

Since updating to Snow Leopard I no longer have any mail in my Sent Mail folder
when using IMAP in Mail 4.1. In fact just a few (258) of all my sent messages (3732)
were properly downloaded.
I noticed that after configuring my Gmail to work with Mail/IMAP some new folders were
created. They are: [Gmail]/Sent Mail/Sent, [Imap]/Drafts, Sent messages, and Deleted Messages. Apart
from those, my Gmail account has always had standard folders such as Inbox, Sent Mail (the majority of my sent messages are in here), Drafts, Spam, and Trash. Apparently Mail is only downloading the messages from the new "Sent messages" folder and not the standard "Sent Mail", wherein all my sent messages actually are.
Another issue it that the spinning gear next to the Gmail Inbox in Mail 4.1 keeps spinning incessantly as if checking for new messages all the time even though it is set to check for new messages every 5 minutes and all messages has been downloaded. I have another IMAP account for my university's email which is working perfectly (neither problems with Sent Mail folder nor spinning gear). I will post the spinning gear problem in a separate question.
In my old MacBook I didn't have this problem when using Gmail with POP. This is the first time I'm using IMAP.
Is anybody having the same problems?
I appreciate your help in advance.

pbchaves wrote:
Since updating to Snow Leopard I no longer have any mail in my Sent Mail folder
when using IMAP in Mail 4.1. In fact just a few (258) of all my sent messages (3732)
were properly downloaded.
I noticed that after configuring my Gmail to work with Mail/IMAP some new folders were
created. They are: [Gmail]/Sent Mail/Sent, [Imap]/Drafts, Sent messages, and Deleted Messages. Apart
from those, my Gmail account has always had standard folders such as Inbox, Sent Mail (the majority of my sent messages are in here), Drafts, Spam, and Trash. Apparently Mail is only downloading the messages from the new "Sent messages" folder and not the standard "Sent Mail", wherein all my sent messages actually are.
you can change Your Sent mailbox to "Sent Mail". select Sent Mail mailbox, go to mailbox menu->use this mailbox for->sent.
Another issue it that the spinning gear next to the Gmail Inbox in Mail 4.1 keeps spinning incessantly as if checking for new messages all the time even though it is set to check for new messages every 5 minutes and all messages has been downloaded. I have another IMAP account for my university's email which is working perfectly (neither problems with Sent Mail folder nor spinning gear). I will post the spinning gear problem in a separate question.
In my old MacBook I didn't have this problem when using Gmail with POP. This is the first time I'm using IMAP.
Is anybody having the same problems?
I appreciate your help in advance.

Mail Missing From Restore

Hello, We are having some issues with missing mail (mainly in Inbox, Sent and Trash) from a restore process. Several users' mail was inadvertently deleted on the mail server. We figured out who the users were and set about restoring their mail from our Tivoli backups.
A "reconstruct" was done once the restore was complete, and everything appeared consistent. However, users are missing mail in their desktop client (thunderbird). But we can see the mail (message count) on the server.
The problem seems to be that after a mailbox has been restored from tape, the iPlanet reconstruct command does not like the store.idx file and deletes most of the messages.
Is there a piece we're missing? We've restore mail folders for users in the past with no problems of this sort. I don't think we've ever had to restore the full mail for a user.
We're running an old version ... waiting for a migration this spring.
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kdpittman wrote:
Hello, We are having some issues with missing mail (mainly in Inbox, Sent and Trash) from a restore process. Several users' mail was inadvertently deleted on the mail server. What do you mean by "inadvertently delete"?
Did the users delete the emails using an email client (e.g. Thunderbird or Messenger Express) or did they "magically" disappear due to some kind of system level corruption?
A "reconstruct" was done once the restore was complete, and everything appeared consistent. However, users are missing mail in their desktop client (thunderbird). But we can see the mail (message count) on the server. You cannot restore previously deleted/expunged individual *.msg files back into the original mailbox and expect them to show up. You need to restore the emails into a completely new folder.
For example, you can create a "recovered" folder (./mboxutil -c user/<uid>/recovered) then restore the emails to the directory created by that command.
Running reconstruct of this new folder will then cause the restored emails to show up and the user then just needs to subscribe to the folder in their IMAP client.
If you were using imsbackup/imsrestore this problem wouldn't have occurred as imsrestore marks the emails as "new".
The problem seems to be that after a mailbox has been restored from tape, the iPlanet reconstruct command does not like the store.idx file and deletes most of the messages.If you restore a folder, and the backup was taken after the email had already been marked-as-deleted by the email client then the email will remain "deleted". The *.msg files aren't cleaned up until the daily imexpire run.
Later versions of Messaging Server have an option to "undelete/expunge" messages that have been deleted by the client by not removed off disk.
Regards,
Shane.

Sent Mail Missing

MacBook Pro Laptop and .mac subscriber for years. Opened mail this evening and all sent mail messages are missing. I noticed mail was caching sent mail in Activity Window so I let it run. 1784 messages and attachments apparently were cached. I opened and closed mail and still no sent mail.
I looked at MobileMe and all my sent mail is on the server. I'm hesitant to do a sync until I know why the messages are off my laptop.

I doubt the messages are gone; Mail has probably just lost it's mind and doesn't realize they're there. So let's try rebuilding your Mail index.
1. Quit Mail if it's running.
2. Go to Home/Library/Mail and remove the Envelope Index file to your Desktop.
3. Restart Mail and allow it to import your existing mailboxes; when it's done your index will have been rebuilt. Check to see whether or not your messages are back; if so, you can delete the old Envelope Index file on your Desktop.
Mulder
Mulder

How do I move or archive large numbers of old Sent mail messages?

I've created folders for past years Sent mail and tried moving my messages out of my Sent folder (for several accounts). They seem to move, but then I get a very basic error (with no details..): "34 messages could not be moved to the mailbox "2009 Sent -- On My Mac" An error occured while moving messages to mailbox "2009 Sent -- On My Mac"
I also get a similar error if I try to archive them. Admittedly I got WAY behind on doing this (they're from 09, 10, and 11), but there must be a way. I've tried selecting only a few months worth instead of the entire year and I still get the error. Is it an issue because they're from my Sent folder? Do I need to set up a special mailbox to move them to?
My goal is to get my Inbox and Sent boxes trimmed down.

I don't know what was happening but yesterday I went back and did the Export/Archive function and it ended up doing just as I expected, exporting the mailbox as an mbox format =finally!!! Not sure why it went haywire but all is fine now.

.Mac Mail sends old sent mail arbitrarily

For some reason when I look at my Sent mail folder it shows old mail sent today. In other words if I look at my send mail folder and all the mail Sent Date mail says Today there's 1 or 2 pieces of mail that also says Today but I orginally sent it in May. If you look at the header of the mail itself there is no sent date. I don't know if these are being resent or its just a bug in the app. and shows it in my mail folder.
Any ideas??
Thanks,
Andrew

You’re welcome.
It does certainly matter how the messages were sent because AFAIK .Mac webmail doesn’t set the Date header on the copy of messages sent that way that it puts in Sent. Neither Mail nor any other mail client can reliably determine the sent date of a message if that header is missing...
Messages sent with Mail have an X-Mailer header that says so when received. That header isn’t present in the copy of the message that Mail puts in Sent, but it can probably still be determined whether a message was sent with Mail or with webmail by looking at the full headers of the message (which you can see doing View > Message > Long Headers).
That said, it isn’t clear what your problem really is with the information you’ve provided. It could also be that you’re experiencing some index corruption and Mail is indeed resending some messages on its own. If you suspect that’s the case, you may proceed 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 the filesystem issues, if any, and ensuring 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 locally stored.
3. Locate Envelope Index and move it to the Trash. If you see any other “Envelope Index”-named file there, delete it as well.
4. Move any “IMAP-”, “Mac-”, or “Exchange-” account folders to the Trash. Note that you can do this with IMAP-type accounts because they store mail on the server and Mail can easily re-create them. DON’T trash any “POP-” account folders, as that would cause all the mail stored there to be lost.
5. 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.
6. As a side effect of having removed the IMAP account folders, those accounts may be in an “offline” state now. Do Mailbox > Go Online to bring them back online.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.

Very old 'Sent' mail missing from mailbox - help?

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