Lost mail in OS Catalina upgrade

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.

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.

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.

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.

Thank you for posting this. This would help me, possibly, if I could open mail and keep it open. The initial problem I have after the upgrade is that mail crashes every single time I open it. The engineers are supposed to be looking at this. I am doubtful that they are.

The missing email problem happened after I attempted one of the work arounds and solutions while working with support. Basically, things got worse when we tried to fix it. The rep who was working with me has been unreachable ever since. He said to email him when I was done the restore, but I had no way to reach him by email and nobody in support can reach him or find his information either.

His name is Tae. He promised me he was going to be with me until the very end on this problem but he’s been unreachable for weeks. If anybody has contact with him, please tell them to contact me.

Tripteron wrote:

Apple Mail does not import all the messages. And it shows the wrong dates for some messages (such as today's date for messages that are fifteen years old).

What a mess! Thanks for trying though.

I did exactly the same thing - upgraded to Catalina because I wanted to sync reminders, was fiddling with my pop account changing preferences and lost ‘all’ emails both received and sent to/from that account. The whole

point I thought with POP is that the emails are downloaded into mail and kept , forever. I’ve certainly changed accounts before with no loss.

I backed up on time machine on dec 6th, so I though meh, just lost a month of emails but in the V6 folder on time machine from that back up I only have emails from jan 21 2019 and before (that was my last time machine backup) . Have booked a Genius Bar appointment hoping that magically they will find all of 2019s emails somewhere but not holding out much hope.

Not sure how to revert to Mojave using time machine, but surely if there are no emails in the mailboxes in the V6 folder after jan 2019 it won’t help ?

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.

Thats what I feared, but I don't understand why none of my emails were backed up in my Dec 2019 backup. It was a full system backup. I can get back the stuff from Jan 19 and before using the methods described above but just devastated at losing a whole year. My fault for not backing up more regularly I guess, but still no guarantees given the december backup issue.

I supposed I'm hoping that some 'pointer' was erased and the apple have magic software to find old emails. Then again I believe in fairies too...

Tripteron wrote:

My lost messages (recovered from back-up) were all in the "On My Mac" account.

With "On My Mac" account you mean in the local folders which you had created under "On My Mac", correct?

I have 24 of them. According to your report, could it be a good strategy (before upgrading to Catalina)

to set up a new email account for each of these folders and to move the emails there?

Then delete the "On My Mac" folders, upgrade, and later create them again and move the messages back?

My lost messages were all in my Inbox - it was due to my fiddling with my settings, but I have done the same thing before with no loss of emails ! The weird Time Machine glitch is my main problem as I'd be able to recover them if that wasn't the case.

replying to Vbat , Ive searched for particular emails that I know I have had recently, in the V6 file and there is nothing there, so I doubt whether using another application to import them woudl make any difference.