Lost mail in OS Catalina upgrade

Hi - Yes, my emails were perfectly restored from my last Mojave backup. But with a lack of 5-6 days during which I used Catalina. I recovered these lost emails from my second Mac, by taking and copying individually all emails in an Out and In folders that I imported.

Ken Nellis,

try to install Mojave to your new MBP, then migrate from the old one. That is more or less what i did. (me: TM backup within 10.14.6, then clean install 10.15.1(via usb stick), restored profiles from TM, but emails were blanked; then clean install 10.14.6, restoring from that same TMbackup, everything fine.)

I have concluded that Apple Mail cannot be trusted to store and import messages reliably. After going through much hassle to recover from loss of messages in Catalina (see earlier post), I exported all my messages and imported them into Postbox. Several folders have more messages in them than what Apple Mail was showing. Some messages that were showing the wrong dates in Apple Mail are now showing the correct dates in Postbox. One mailbox with over 10,000 messages of correspondence with a close friend shows 1500 (!) more messages in Postbox than in Apple Mail.

So I am trying out Postbox. It looks very good so far. Got a good review in MacWorld. You can learn more here:

https://postbox-inc.com

Postbox stores messages in mbox format in a simpler folder structure than what Apple uses, so importing messages back into Apple Mail should be pretty easy if you change your mind later.

I got Intego anti-malware software, that got corrupted, and messed everything up, but most of my data, was STILL intact .

I went into the Apple "App Store", and requested a fresh copy, of Catalina v10.15.3, which was over 8GB, downloaded, through the "System Preferences"->"Software Update"-preferences-pane, and completed the installation .

Now, to get my working Safari, back, I de-authorized Intego VBX9, uninstalled all Intego products, went into Safari, and re-downloaded the Intego software-suite, and re-installed, and re-authorized it, and did a FULL SCAN -- then, I downloaded and installed a fresh copy of my favorite alternative browser -- now, I've got TWO working browsers .

Under macOS Catalina v10.15.3, looked-up the support article on re-building the "Spotlight"-index, to the boot-up drive , implemented it, and THEN

after THAT was complete, I cranked-up Apple "Mail", and, one-by-one, with appropriate time, between each :

I selected a mailbox, in the left-hand-side, I went to the Mail pull-down-menu, selected the "Mailbox"->"Rebuild", then WAITED (because there was no indication of progress, that I could discern), then I scrolled-through each mailbox, and the most-recent, filled-in -- it didn't recover ALL missing e-mails, but at least, what I had, in the internal-V7-Mail-folder, did not show, as incomplete !

-- then, quit the Apple "Mail" program, and re-cranked-up, Apple Mail -- the MOST RECENT Apple e-mails, were O.K. !

After my install experience, Apple support called me to try and resolve the issue. They are patient and very good. Outcome, the emails are gone. But it's not all Apple's fault. This is just based on my experience. If you have a lot of emails the Catalina install can take a very long time. and these is no clock to give you an estimate. This is because it's migrating the email. In my case based semi faulty information I just hit restart in middle of the process. Therefore the emails were gone.

I can't state strongly enough the you must backup before you do any OS install. As for Catalina not great. and 10.15.1. tried to fix things under the hood but its not enough.

Not sure if e-Mails sorry Lady ladyto not Problem

And I am not sure if we go to detection of Siri does really work very well

****

holy Siri dictation language auto detection..... Apple, acquire Nuance.

not sure if Mails are deleted or just not properly imported and displayed as indicated in previous posts. PLEASE try to install 10.14 with bootable USB stick and use migration assistant to migrate your 10.15 profile. It would be interesting for every one here to know if that works. If so, that means that mails would not be lost.

Logically, if this can happen for every type of account ( (POP, IMAP, Exchange), it is a real problem when you cannot download back your e-mails (usually, when you download your e-mails from a POP account, they are erased from four distant POP account server).

If ALL your e-mails are on an IMAP server (Gmail and so on), well, you can download them back.

TM is able to restore your E-Mails. Make a clean install of 10.14 and restore with migration assistant.

Messages can be recovered from a back-up.

Same problem here, emails vanished or blanked after clean install of 10.15.1 and profile restoring from time machine back up. After clean install/ downgrade to 10.14.6 everything could be recovered from the same time machine back up.

somewhere on the Internet some guy wrote that he managed the problem by restoring mailboxes from his third party backup. Actually I didn’t quite understand how he did that. I found a function in catalina’s mail app „Postfach wiederherstellen“ that would translate to restore account, but actually all that it did was to delete the emails, I was never asked to locate the back up to be restored.

I just opened Apple Mail today after leaving it untouched since November, and I'm being prompted to import all my emails, which means basically all my categorization, smartboxes etc. are now blown away. Prior to this, Apple Mail was crashing COMPLETELY every time I opened it. This happened immediately after I upgraded to Catalina. My case has been added to the list of '100 or so users' who are having the same problem. Apple is 'working on it' but it isn't a very high priority since 'only a few' people are affected.?????

The only workaround given was to import mail - which Mail is now trying to force me to do.

I declined this workaround because of how it would destroy my file/mail organization, legal case prep/management and more. Now, suddenly, Apple is trying to force me to do this very thing?

[Edited by Moderator]

canetree wrote:

Just for clarification, is this issue occurring on all types of email accounts (POP, IMAP, Exchange, Gmail etc.)? I have a couple of iCloud accounts that go all the way back to the .Mac days I'm concerned about. I've been holding off on upgrading after reading these "horror" stories.

Thanks.

My lost messages (recovered from back-up) were all in the "On My Mac" account. They came from several POP and IMAP accounts during the last 25 years. Once the messages are in the "On My Mac" account for local storage, I don't think that the originating account is relevant. Messages from accounts that I deleted after storing the messages in the "On My Mac" account are still present.

G'day Tripteron,

Bit confused here. I thought from your earlier posts that you had upgraded to Catalina already. In doing a 10.15.x Catalina to 10.15.4 Catalina upgrade I wouldn't expect you to have problems, even if the software hadn't been fixed. The major mail reformatting occurred in the 10.x.x to Catalina upgrade. In a Catalina to Catalina upgrade you wouldn't use the broken software (as the mail is already reformatted) so, no, you wouldn't see any problems.

You do say in your e-mail that it "converted my Mojave messages" without problem which suggests you did a Mojave to 10.15.4 Catalina upgrade. But I can't see how you could have done that without restoring your already upgraded Catalina box back to Mojave, which doesn't seem very likely.

Anyone knows for how long this has been published? If there were only a few hundred users affect I doubt they would mention the problem in their official user guide:

https://support.apple.com/guide/mail/if-emails-arent-displayed-or-look-strange-mlhlp1159/13.0/mac/10.15

Second question: Anyone here how made a clean install of 10.15.4 and restored profiles from 10.14.6 TM backup? Problem still there?

1. I imported messages from a back-up of V6 mail into Apple Mail (Catalina).
2. I exported messages from Apple Mail into folders on my hard drive.
3. I imported those messages into Postbox.