Mail Messages Suddenly Blank!

Grab the folder and drag it down to a new space. Worked for me, all the emails came back. Then I slipped the folder back where it belonged.

Not bad for an old lady (53)

Hope it works for you!

I got news for you Thomas, not everyone searches for tech help via Apple's Support Community; I got here using Google. And whether or not the thread was a month or a year old, I was able to address my problem with the help and experience of all these other posters ....with the exception of the berating diatribe you elected to submit. So who died and made you king?

When my computer starts acting up I'm not interested in posting or searching endlessly for help. If I can find it in one spot great! And that's what we have here; a lot of good information about a problem that seems to have no rhyme or reason as to why it happens. Fortunately the only other time I had problems was during one of the Snow Leopard updates.

I am running OS X 10.6.8

My latest blanking of one of my mail accounts happened when I deleted some mailboxes from the "On My Mac" folder ....just doing some house cleaning ....and for some reason all the mail in the last inbox I was using disappeared. The "new mail" count number was present but none of the mail, old or new, was displayed. Most of my new mail was from eBay dealing with an auction I had just won. In addition to the missing mail, a "flip switch" appeared next to the inbox title; flipping it did nothing. I looked all over for the missing mail (in Mail) but could not find them.

I was able to use my time machine to restore 95% of the missing mailbox messages but the newest mail didn't make the cutoff for the latest update ...and the newest mail was the stuff from eBay/PayPal.

I also tried deleting the problem mailbox and reinstating it (using "File" >"Add Account") with the idea the missing e-mails (along with all the old ones) would be reloaded from my server. And this worked even better than using Time Machine as I was able to capture those e-mails not making the last T.M. backup. However, upon signing into by server, none of the eBay/PayPal messages showed up in the server inbox .....very strange and I'm wondering if this was the cause of this latest "missing mail" debacle.

Diatribe? Telling someone how to make more effective use of these forums and that backups are very important is a diatribe? You sure you know what that word means?

You know what? I've just got one thing to say to you: You need to brush your teeth every day to avoid cavities! Whew, sorry for such strong words, but you made me do it.

Moving the folder to another location worked like a charm!

Having had the same issues syncing with a Gmail App account with Mail4.5 on 10.6.8 and reading through all of the posts here (and trying a number of the solutions offered) it seems that Apple Mail inbox does not support any folders inside it. These must be separate (i.e. outside of the inbox). Then it all seems to work as it should.

Thanks

Had the blank emails as well. moving files & folders or rebuilding did not help. (OS X 10.6.8, Mail 4.5)

What worked for me was deleting emails from the Exchange server. Apparently MS Exchange has trouble synching large inboxes or something...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3748

cheers,

Can this recovery work by copying the mailbox directories and then re-importing the messages from there?

Hello,

I am having the same problem with mail since March 1st week 2013. I tried deleting and recreating my hotmail account but it stops downloading at 248 messages everytime. I have about 15000+ messages on the server. After 248 messages, the status bar shows all remaining mails downloaded in 1-2 seconds but nothing appears in Mail.

Tried deleting the envelope index but did not work.

Any solutions? Am thinking of stopping hotmail use but its an old account and most used for my buisness.

Sanjay

I hate to say it but I switched to Thunderbird.

When I first had this problem I was able to get it fixed ...not sure how but it took a bit of work. The second time it happened I dumped Mail. Just left it alone and installed Thunderbird (along with it's web browser Firefox ...becasue my company's website, at the time, would not work with Safari).

I haven't had a problem with my e-mail since.

Maybe I'll go back to Mail someday but why? If Apple Mail craps out for no good reason why use it? And, given this continuing thread, it's apparently still acting up.

Thunderbird is free and it works.

At least by having a working alternative you can then take your time trying to "fix" Mail while still being able to have a functioning e-mail program.

Good luck.

Mike

I don't mind reviving old threads. New info just bumps the old thread back to the top. Old threads can have great, relevant info.

Anyway, the tip below really helped me. I had POP mail (Inbox, Drafts, Sent) in folders that Mail wouldn't "see." Import worked for "On My Mac" mail but not POP mail. So this tip helped me see the easy 2-step way of getting mail loaded into On My Mac and then from there into the POP folders. I use 10.5.8 / Mail 3.6.

But! I now have the problem of duplicate emails in the On My Mac folder for my Inbox. It seems like this is what Rebuild is intended to fix, but I got into trouble in the first place by trying to use Rebuild! I've read that you need to let it run without interference until it's finished. I had thought Mail had crashed. So I did a Force Quit on it and when I reopened it I had lost most of my Mail. Thankfully I could still see it in my various folders in Lib/Mail. Mail couldn't see it. So I did all the recommended removal of comp.apple.mail.plist and Envelope Index and I backed up those folders and restarted and reconnected and have spent 3 DAYS now chasing it around without luck until now. I call my current status of getting surprise duplicate email "lucky" compared to where I was!

OK, I had 8000 emails in an Inbox folder that Mail refused to "see." (I knew which folder Mail was seeing but if I copied lost email into it, it would delete it and not retain it.) I imported it into On My Mac about 10 minutes ago. It now has 8000 emails in it but half are duplicates. Hmmm. I clicked "Rebuild" for that folder and it's been running ever since. I'll just give it time. I hope this works! UPDATE: the Rebuild finished and all duplicates are still there.

This duplication is scary. Let's see if I can tame it!

Blackle wrote:

Okay.
I had the same problem.
I tried rebuild: all my blank emailed disappeared
I tried library/mail/envelope Index: the rest of my blank emails disappeared.

The question is really if the emails that disappeared are still present on the computer.
I went to ~library/Mail. Then found the POP folders where the emails have been saved to the computer. Once that is opened. It showed "Deleted messages, Drafts, Inbox, Jun, and Sent messages" this may differ from user to user. However, I clicked on "Inbox" and all my messages were there under "messages". I could open them and read them.

Therefore, the files are not lost.

To repair:
1. Quit and reopen Mail
2. File Import Mailboxes. Select Apple Mail and continue
3. Find the "INBOX" file. ~Library/Mail/POP..../Messages/Inbox
4. Do not open the inbox, select it then press "Choose"
5. Those messages will now be in your MacMail Under the "ON MY MAC" heading on the left hand pannel.
6. under "ON MY MAIL," there will be a folder titled "Import" and the "Inbox" folder is there.
7. select all the messages from the imported inbox. Right click. Select "Move to" and select "Inbox" .. Your inbox.
8. Repeat steps 2-7 for "sent messages" and move imported sent messages to Your Sent messages.


If the messages are no where to be found on your computer, then the files are likely not there, and you will need to restore some files.

I ran into this problem today.

Mailbox->Rebuild had no affect.

Restarting Mac Mail had no affect.

I did not want to risk losing any mail by mucking around with deleting index (or other) files.

I took a chance and restarted my computer.

Strangely, no more blank messages and no messages lost.

Hi - have read through many parts of this thread - and none of it see,s to fit for me. I am using Outlook on the MacBook Pro. Messages come on to my Blackberry and I can see messages at Yahoo - but messages come in to Outlook - but the text of the email is missing. This only started yesterday.

In Users/Library/Mailbox - I can't see a box with any messages in or of any size that would contain several hundred emails etc.

Am I missing something here?

Tony

I am late to the forum but it recently happened to me. What I did was went to is Window > Message Viewer and it came back. Even close Mail and re-opened and it appeared. Hope that helps.

It's just over 3 years later, but thanks, Hazem Malek, for posting this suggesting about Indexing.

My problem was simple: my emails in just the Inbox were blank. However if I double-clicked them and they opened in a separate window, they'd appear fine. It was only in the preview window that they had disappeared.

When I read what Hazem suggested, I saw that the Mail folder in the Library was over 4Gigs big. so to avoid a long download (I use only GMail IMAP), I opened up a folder in Mail: V2:IMAP-name@gmail.com: Inbox. I dragged JUST that Inbox folder to the desktop, as well as the Index file on Mail:Envelope Index.

That did it. Upon restarting, my emails in my Inbox were immediately viewable.

Thanks again!

(running 10.8.4 and all updates)