IMAP trash emptying on its own

It sounds to me like either Mail.app or some server setting must be causing the mail in the "regular" trash to get emptied. Maybe you have Mail.app set to empty the trash when quitting Mail?

Once you have switched the iPhone to use its own iPhone trash folder, it should treat the "regular" trash as a plain-old folder. Maybe the iPhone is still set to use the "regular" trash folder? You can verify this by deleting an email on the iPhone. It should "land" in the special iPhone Trash folder, NOT the "regular trash" one.

fakeExpert said:

"It sounds to me like either Mail.app or some server setting must be causing the mail in the "regular" trash to get emptied."

Mail.app keeps getting blamed for the cause of this, but I don't use Mail.app and still have this problem. Others have said the same thing.

Well, we now KNOW that a bug in iPhone mail does indeed cause this symptom, but ONLY when the "empty mail" setting is set to "Never". Since this user claimed that his iPhone was NOT set this way, and yet he was still seeing the symptom, the only logical conclusion is that something else must be responsible. Furthermore, it is indeed possible to configure Mail.app (or any other IMAP client, for that matter) to result in these symptoms. Likewise, server-based settings can also come into play. I was merely suggesting that if the iPhone was indeed ruled out in this case, that something else must be responsible. And Mail.app IS one possible culprit. I was not saying that Mail.app is in general to "blame" for this issue. As far as I can tell, there is nothing wrong with the way Mail.app handles IMAP mail.

In your case, since you do not use Mail.app, you will have to figure out for yourself where the problem lies. I suggest examining the "empty trash" settings on all the clients you use to access your Imap account, and also check if there are any server-side settings that control trash-emptying... If you have multiple clients, an effective way of isolating them is to use separate trash folders for each, as initially suggested at the top of this thread.

I can personally rule out that my mail client or my mail provider is to blame based on the following facts:

1. i don't use a mail client, I use a web interface (which I admit is a type of mail client and has the capability to automatically purge emails, but more importantly...)

2. i have had the same email provider for about 3 years. the trash folder had never been involuntarily purged at any point during that period. in fact it had never been purged at all. i had many, many emails in my trash. the first time my trash was emptied out occurred after I got my iPhone.

Let me take a moment to update the thread and see where we are at.




Problem:

When using an IMAP account on the iPhone and the "empty mail" setting is set to Never, the iPhone involuntarily purges the trash folder.

User that are experiencing this problem (regardless of firmware) are:

Graham - Sonos
Jeffrey Shanahan
Roel Smelt
MacPaint



*+Possible solution+* (suggested by user domim):

Use the restore feature (as opposed to the upgrade option) and update the firmware to 1.1.2.




Can anyone else verify this solution works? Anything else to add?

Message was edited by: MacPaint

Hi,

small update from me... i ran the same test that i ran before, sending myself a number of emails with an easy to track subject line (test 1, test 2 etc) this time to an account on a different service provider.. but also accessed by Mail.app 3.0 and iPhone. The trash settings are the same on Mail.app and iPhone... after 3 days, which is longer than the test made it the first time... all of the messages are still in my trash where they belong.

So initial impressions from my experience is that the imap implementation/imap host may be an influencing factor in what is happening.

-graham

The server-side protocol implementation is definitely a factor. E.g. Exchange server do not move a deleted item to the trash although setup correctly.

I just wanted to repeat my experience. When I upgraded to 1.1.2 I actually restored my phone completely and did NOT restore from backup in iTunes. I rather set up everything new and since then my trash is not emptying by itself anymore. I have a Gmail, a .mac, two Exchange (2003 & 2007) as well as a CommuniGate Pro server accounts. All are working fine except Exchange delete does not work properely. But that's a different story. And I have all accounts set to NEVER DELETE!

Maybe one of you still having problems could also do a restore and set up the accounts from scratch? Maybe some settings from a previous firmware version does screw up?

MacPaint:
I think you have a different problem than Graham. He stated that his "regular" trash gets emptied even when iPhone is configured to use a different trash folder. If the iPhone is set to use a separate trash folder, I don't think it will touch the "regular" trash folder, no matter what the "empty trash after" option is set to. I therefore concluded that there must be something OTHER than iPhone to blame in Graham's case. Hence my suggestions involving Mail.app and/or server settings.

In your case, it seems to me that you must be experiencing the "trash empties quickly even though it's set for never" bug. The same problem the rest of us here have been experiencing. I think we are all in agreement that THIS issue is indeed an iPhone bug.

How do we get this bug reported to Apple?

In the meantime, for me, using the "empty after 1 month" setting on iPhone is a reasonable workaround.

I have completely restored to 1.1.2 from scratch, without using a backup.

I can confirm that I am still losing my trash mail that is longer than one week old.

All of my settings are correct...set to never empty trash.

The only work around for me is to set the trash to go to a different folder on the iPhone.

Another update, in my case it doesn't turn out to be host specific, after a bit more time i lost my trash from my second provider as well.

The work around I have used is to set the iPhone (1.1.2) to remove after 1 month. Now all my emails in the trash are deleted after one month.

We have a few work arounds, but no solution.


*APPLE WHERE ARE YOU?!* Why isn't this fixed?

Another "me, too" here -- I'm running my e-mail off a dovecot IMAP server on my Linux box, and I am seeing the same behavior from the iPhone "Deleted Messages" folder. (I hadn't really checked before, as I tend not to worry so much about when my deleted messages are actually removed, but the iPhone is in fact set to "never" remove deleted messages...)

--John

Me, too.

Just got an iPhone about a week ago and I never delete messages from the trash. I keep everything and archive the trash into a new folder at the end of each year. I go to do it today and there's nothing there older than a week.

I filed a bug with Apple, #5666028. I hope something comes from it.

My company has experienced the same lost items issue as others in this thread. FWIW, our writeup of the issue is included below. We settled on the same workaround as most - a separate Deleted Items folder for the iPhone mail app to use.


Issue with iPhones and lost Deleted Items on Exchange server mailboxes

We recently encountered a problem where items in a user’s Exchange server-based Deleted Items folder were disappearing. One minute there would be a few hundred items in the folder and the next minute less than 20. We were able to use the Outlook “Recover Deleted Items” tool to retrieve the items. However, anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours later, they would disappear again.

We quickly figured out that this was happening on only two of our accounts – one a PC user with Outlook 2003 and the other a Mac user with Entourage 2004. Without any commonalities in the client software, we started looking at the Exchange server, but were unable to find any problems there. We finally discovered that both accounts were being accessed by the user’s iPhone in addition to their desktop email client.

The iPhones were configured to access the Exchange server using IMAP. In the mailbox settings on the iPhone, under Advanced/Mailbox Behaviors, “Deleted Mailbox” was pointed to the user’s Deleted Items folder on the Exchange server. “Remove Deleted Items” was set to Never.

It appears that with this configuration, deleting a message on the iPhone caused the Deleted Items folder on the server to be nearly emptied (it always left a few recent items, somewhere between 5 and 40).

Changing “Remove Deleted Items” to a setting other than Never had no effect on the problem.

As a partial workaround, we created a new Exchange server folder called “Deleted From iPhone” and pointed the iPhone Mailbox Behaviors “Deleted Mailbox” to that folder. After this, items stopped disappearing from the Deleted Items folder. With further testing, we confirmed that items in the “Deleted From iPhone” folder are now disappearing. For now, we’re telling users not to delete messages from the iPhone unless they are absolutely sure they won’t need them.

Version info: Exchange 2003 on Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2. Both iPhone are running v1.1.2 of that OS. These iPhones came with 1.1.2 out of the box.