Grrr. Backspace deleted my messages.

Grrr. Something is telling me that Apple Mail is flawed.

So I am looking at a [ sent ] message, and try to add a to-do associated with it. But I press 'enter' and the details of the to-do are incorrect. So I click on the details and try to back-space, and instead of deleting the to-do error, it deleted the message.

"No problem", I thought, "I just need to go to the trash folder of Apple Mail and restore the file".

So I go to the trash, and W T F ? Nothing there! So to test that I didn't do some foolish "permanent delete" keyboard shortcut, I went back to my sent messages, clicked on a message, and then pressed the backspace button. It disappears. I go to the trash... nothing there.

What the h e l l is this nonsense?! Apple Mail permanently deletes messages when you press "backspace"? What the h e l l is with this inconsistency anyway... To delete in the finder, Command+Delete. To delete in Apple Mail, Delete.

Desperate for help of restoring my files, or preventing this in future.

MacBook 2.0GHz with aluminum unibody, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Dec 21, 2008 10:34 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 21, 2008 11:40 PM

A quick call to Apple support, and the solution is discovered.

In the Mail preferences, under the "Accounts" tab, there is a list of mail accounts that is associated with Apple Mail.

Clicking on each of these options displays the settings associated with each account. Under the "Mailbox Behaviours" sub-tabs, there is an option for the trash section that says:
Move deleted messages to a separate folder

Mine was unchecked.

This option mislead me -- I thought that this was a scheduled option to move old messages, especially because the option directly beneath it is "erase deleted messages when:".

I think that option should instead read:
Move deleted messages to the "Trash" folder

or whatever the person has renamed "Trash" to.
1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 21, 2008 11:40 PM in response to James_Kanjo

A quick call to Apple support, and the solution is discovered.

In the Mail preferences, under the "Accounts" tab, there is a list of mail accounts that is associated with Apple Mail.

Clicking on each of these options displays the settings associated with each account. Under the "Mailbox Behaviours" sub-tabs, there is an option for the trash section that says:
Move deleted messages to a separate folder

Mine was unchecked.

This option mislead me -- I thought that this was a scheduled option to move old messages, especially because the option directly beneath it is "erase deleted messages when:".

I think that option should instead read:
Move deleted messages to the "Trash" folder

or whatever the person has renamed "Trash" to.

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Grrr. Backspace deleted my messages.

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