Mac Mail deleting mail older than 1 month old

Hi Steve

Just wondered if you resolved this issue? I cannot stop my inbox from deleting my mail after 30 days. It only started about 3 months ago

ny help would be much appreciated

Regards

That setting is in Mail -> Preferences, click the Accounts icon, select the account in the list at left and click the Mailbox Behaviors tab. See the pop-up under Trash with the label "Permanently erase deleted messages when:".

Thomas Reed

Hello Steve:

I do not use either of the things you mentioned. However, I would look at both Mac Mail and Mobile Me closely for automatic deletion settings. I use AOL as my mail platform and have it set to automatically delete messages after a month.

As another thought, if you are using Time Machine, restore to a point early enough to recover your missing mail.

Barry

Hello Steve:

I think you misunderstood my post. I was not talking about the delete trash setting in Apple's Mail application. Many (most?) E-mail providers have settings in their applications to automatically delete mail. This has nothing to do with Apple's mail application. I know nothing about Mobile Me or Mac mail, but what I was suggesting was that those might have a setting someplace.

Apple's mail application did not, on its own, to delete mail. There is no setting in that application that I am aware of that would cause that to happen.

Barry

Is this MobileMe account accessed by more than one computer or device. If another computer (or even just another email client) is accessing the account, make sure that it is not setup as POP. Where permitted, accessing an IMAP account as POP with another computer, and where that is set up with the POP option to remove from server after some time period, one of which is typically one month, is the leading cause of what you are reporting.

Ernie

Ahh, sorry, I read too quickly. That's definitely not normal behavior... in fact, I wouldn't have said you could do that in Mail! Do you have any Mail plugins installed?

Another thing to check -- do you have any Smart Mailboxes in use, and if so, what are their criteria, and what are they meant to do?

Is this other account set up to collect email from the MobileMe account, as can be done with a Gmail account?

May be totally unrelated, but are you using Time Machine anywhere in your system?

Ernie

Actually my interest in Time Machine was that it might the cause of what you are observing -- long shot, but it has been reported to have introduced another problem related to Mail.

Still thinking what this could be.

Ernie

Trash mailboxes are not created unless you delete a message requiring one, and have deleted messages selected to move to a separate folder. In Mail Preferences/Accounts/Mailbox Behaviors what are you selections?

Why would you want to delete a "builtin" mailbox?

Ernie