Mail Messages Suddenly Blank!

Have you tried rebuilding that mailbox? (Use Mailbox -> Rebuild.)

Hi, I also at times have the rogue email although sent & received Never shows up in my Sent box..
As a belt N braces -> I have a Gmail account, everything sent from or to my mobileme account is duplicated on the gmail account..saves a whole bunch of worries...L

I also have this issue, suddenly noticed loads of sent messages were blank!! then noticed loads of old inbox messages are too. Did the rebuild but that wipes all the blank ones away... Even if I re-add the account and download them from the server that won't bring back the sent messages,.. plus this just shouldn't happen on my shiny new macbook pro & snow leopard should it!

Hi,

This is an indexing problem, but can't say what caused it. Do you have any plugins or other Mail enhancement software in use? The most common cause of indexing problems is with something other than Mail being used to move messages around between mailboxes.

Is this an IMAP or POP account?

Ernie

I had this happen when I switched the outgoing email server. It seems Mail associates email with the outgoing server rather than the incoming one for some reason.

Despite seeing this connection, when I switched back my email did not reappear and I'm afraid it's unavailable unless I dig through my CrashPlan backup.

I'm having same problem, same symptoms. (In fact, I hadn't noticed my Sent items were also missing from a POP account until I checked following your comment.)

Attempting to rebuild mailboxes as suggested by someone here did not work--it erased all mention of emails older than yesterday.

I'm attempting to restore from backup, but it's a month old. I will have lost at least a month's worth of email.

I, too, have found myself with the same issue. Note than the blank eMails are still in their respective folders within the Mail folder in the user Library. If I search for something, they still show up in spotlight, and if I double click any of them they open in Mail with full content. I can then move them into a folder and they work fine, but I have thousands of them and i don't know how to get them to recover! I've tried the rebuild as well with no success.

maxperts experience exactly reflects mine. Rebuild makes the emails seemingly disappear completely from Mail, though they are findable with Spotlight. I've not seen it happen to emails that I've filed into folders, only those left in the Sent box. This is a potentially disastrous bug, we need to be able to find our sent mail - that's the point in having the database!

This started after the 10.6.4 update that occurred last Tuesday for most of us. It seems to effect Exchange types of email accounts the most. I have switched and set my Exchange 2007 account as an Exchange IMAP account and while the syncing up and down doesn't work perfect it is working and functional again as a mail client. I spent forever on the phone with Apple Care and didn't receive any solutions except to check back with someone next week and see if something can be found. I didn't change anything except running the update from apple. My machine is pretty much stock with no ad in's or custom scripts running. I feel there are a lot more people out there with this issue then Apple realizes. FYI my Exchange account works fine in Entourage, but I can't stand to use that program.

The same thing is happening to me and I just got my macbook pro. I did a few updates it told me to do and then the mail started showing blank messages. I hope they fix this really soon because I prefer to use mail versus going to my optimum homepage which is a pain. If anyone finds out anything helpful regarding this issues I would appreciate the knowledge! 🙂

This problem is most probably related to indexing messages and you can simply solve it by following these steps :

(1) Quit Mail if it's already open

(2) Copy your ~/Library/Mail folder to your desktop as a backup incase something goes wrong

(3) Trash or move to desktop that file ~/Library/Mail/Envelope Index

(4) Open Mail and you will be presented with a Mail Message Import message, click continue and let it do what it has to to

That would simply import and reindex all mail messages rebuilding the database, Envelope Index is a SQLite database that stores key information about your emails. Over time it can get corrupted in a way that wouldn't knock out your Mail application. Furthermore, that should speed you your Mail application and dramatically reduce your emails size. I hopt that will solve your issue