Lost mail in OS Catalina upgrade

A question for the others:

Tripteron wrote:

(5) I believe that messages get restored with with their attributes (read/unread, flagged, junk), but I'm not sure. I cannot tell because I did not have attributes set on my messages.

Please can somebody who had successfully restored some "unread" emails confirm this?

Thanks a lot!

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.

Hello Tripteron,

So your method above didn't work reliably for all messages?

Or could it be that your problems (e.g. 1500 of 11,500 mails lost) had already occurred before upgrading to Catalina?

After carrying out your method, you had written "I'm waiting for their [Apple support's] next idea, which may come after the holidays."

For which reason were/are you still waiting for their idea? Other issues which your method could not resolve?

I hesitate before switching email apps, because I never had a serious problem before with Apple Mail and I still don't know in which cases migration to Catalina Mail goes wrong. Most people don't seem to have (or just haven't noticed?) these problems. Still reason enough to wait with upgrading to Catalina, which is bad for me for other reasons...

I hope that 10.15.3 will finally fix this.

My method worked fine. Those 1500 messages were in my mail database until I upgraded to Catalina. I recovered them and I am now able to access them — but only in a different mail program.

I am convinced that Apple Mail has bugs in converting messages from previous OS versions, in importing messages through the menu command, and in displaying all the messages that are in the mail database.

I was waiting for Apple’s help in solving the problem of 50,000 missing e-mail messages. But I got them back myself. The only things I want from Apple now are explanations: why the messages were lost in the first place, why messages appear with the wrong send/receive dates (while a different mail program shows the right dates), and why Mail does not display all the messages that are in the database (while a different mail program does display them all).

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]

CuriousCanadian wrote:

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.

Perhaps only 100 or so users have contacted Apple support because of this issue, but how many may just have not noticed yet that their emails are missing? And may have made fresh backups under Catalina? And may have used the old backup drives (which contained their emails) otherwise in the meantime?

So I would say this issue should have high priority!

CuriousCanadian wrote:

[Edited by Moderator]

At least it is a nice thing to know that Apple does watch this thread ;-)

However I would prefer a reply with a reliable solution.

Question to all those folks reading:

Does the problem with missing or blanked out emails occured after clean install or after simple update within the old OS X? I just tried clean install and restore from TMBackup. @CuriousCanadian: You just miss your categorization, smartboxes etc. or emails? Not sure if we have the same problem.

MacPear wrote:

Does the problem with missing or blanked out emails occured after clean install or after simple update within the old OS X?

I had read in another discussion that emails were even lost after a clean install and restore of emails, unfortunately.

So could it possibly be that I could avoid the problem if I'd make a simple upgrade (we call it "overinstallation" in Germany, because we install it over the old one) instead of clean install? No one with simple upgrade had this problem?

Normally, I'm an early adopter of MacOS updates. I'm running Catalina on development machines for my day job. But I've been holding off on putting it on any machines that I use Apple Mail after hearing these horror stories. It's really surprising this hasn't been addressed since there have been several articles about this issue since the release of Catalina. This includes MacRumors, Digital Trends, Apple Insider, & a bunch of others.

Same problem for me. Upgraded to 10.15.2 and opened up Apple mail and I have zero emails and all my internet accounts are gone. I made a complete bootable backup before upgrading. Going to trash Catalina and revert to my backup.

I'm one of many following this thread who have not yet upgraded from Mojave, for fear of losing many years' worth of emails I frequently need to search, or of losing attributes and movement among mailboxes and Smart Mailboxes, etc. Lately, there's increasing pressure from Apple to upgrade: Syncing Mac computers with iOS 13 devices for apps such as Reminders now requires using Catalina. Is there ANY indication that Apple is taking this mail problem seriously? (An independent, authorized Apple tech said he'd heard that Apple knows, and "is baffled.") Any news of a fix in the next OS 15 update? If not, is there any way to get Apple's attention that might actually do more than elicit the dismissive response that, e.g., "only a statistically few Apple Mail users have reported issues"? (An Apple tech support person admitted that uncomplaining customers may have relatively few saved emails which they never search, unlike the thousands of archived messages that people like me keep and often search for professional reasons.) Any solid news, anyone?? Thanks....

Hello,

Same problem here with Catalina 10.15.2.

Unaware of all these problems with Apple Mail, and because I stupidly erased my mails (pop) while trying to change Pref. Syst./Internet Accounts (that's already strange: deleting an account will delete all related pop3 messages in Mail…), I decided to used my last Time Machine Backup.

Not working. 

Ok, nothing to fear, I restore completely my MacBook Pro 16" with the last Time Machine backup (just two days ago). Everything is working fine, but Apple Mail: wants to import messages, ok, but when that's done: all messages are blank, just headers (and the the corresponding folder in Preferences/Mail is shrunk to 5% of its initial size: 54 GB to 2.5 GB...). 

Not Happy.

While some recovery methods work for some the rest of us are left with 10s of thousands of emails just gone. Deleted by a problem in the upgrade process. A lesson to be learned to back up before you do any upgrade. I wax on the phone with Apple, they initiated the call the tech finally had to admit the emails were gone.

Oh thanks. Yes, I tried: and it’s working, more or less. I tried with a small mailbox. Once in the import folder, messages tend to lose their content again when I put them back to the right mailbox folder. I still didn’t understand if it is better to move them one by one, to move them in group, with my mouse or with a right click or using the button in the ruban… for they do not vanished.

Anyway, I’m right now importing my main mailbox (>45Go) and the night was not enough for Mail to do less than half of it (on a bright new MBP 16”).

Waiiiiiiiiiiit… and see, or not.