Emails disappearing in front of your eyes

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Level 1

8 points

Emails disappearing in front of your eyes

Hi guys, I shall try and make this as brief as possible. Please excuse me if I get the terminology wrong.

Last week my wife was informed by her email provider that settings on her email account would be changing and to follow the attached instructions . Previously everything worked fine. Having made all the necessary changes to the Mail app on her iPad, iPhone and Apple Mail on the iMac (IMAP, SMTP, ports etc. setup as suggested) there appears to be a serious problem with mail delivery to the iMac (just the iMac). Emails are disappearing.

1/ Mail is delivered to her Mail account on the web correctly.

2/ If the iMac Mail account is offline then emails are delivered to the client iPad and iPhone Inbox's correctly.

3/If however you now take the iMac Mail account online and there are emails waiting, you get the message that emails are downloading but most of the time (not always) they don't appear in the Inbox on the iMac. In fact they have totally disappeared with the knock-on effect that they now disappear in front of your eyes from the iPad and iPhone Inbox's and the from the Inbox on the web - never to be seen again. As I said a proportion of emails do make it to the iMac inbox but I can't see a pattern.

I have tried deleting the account and re-installing, rebuilding ( not sure if that did anything) but feel there might be an indexing problem in how the emails are being stored. When I deleted one of the few emails that made it to the iMac Inbox, the deleted email was correctly put in the Bin but another email in the Inbox just disappeared. Again this meant the email disappeared from the iPad, iPhone and web.

Any thoughts guys? It would be much appreciated

iMac 21.5" 4K, macOS 10.15

Posted on Apr 9, 2020 9:08 AM

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Answer 1

Tesserax

Level 10

158,484 points

Apr 9, 2020 10:03 AM in response to Andrew_Peace

Since this appears to only affect her iMac, it may just be a setting that needs to be corrected.

IMAP works by keeping messages on the eMail provider's servers in various "mailboxes." IMAP clients, then can access these messages, and do so, from a number of clients. Only if you elect to delete a message will it no longer be accessible from these clients. This is different than POP3 accounts, where the first client accessing the email server will have all of the messages, on that server, downloaded to that client.

Who is the eMail provider? Did this change for going from a POP3 to an IMAP-type account?

One thing to check on the iMac will be the "Mailbox Behaviors" settings: Mail > Preferences > Accounts > select the appropriate email account > Mailbox Behaviors

The following images are examples of the default Mailbox Behaviors settings for an Outlook and a Gmail IMAP account respectively:

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Answer 2

leroydouglas

Level 10

199,956 points

Apr 9, 2020 9:47 AM in response to Andrew_Peace

Andrew_Peace wrote:

Hi guys, I shall try and make this as brief as possible. Please excuse me if I get the terminology wrong.

Last week my wife was informed by her email provider that settings on her email account would be changing and to follow the attached instructions .

Previously everything worked fine

. Having made all the necessary changes to the Mail app

Emails are disappearing.

What changes where made— what instruction?

Emails are disappearing, where? You see them and then you don't? There never show up?

Did you run the Connection Doctor? Are you connected to the IMAP server?

Use Connection Doctor in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

Have you talked to your email provider for technical support? Seems to me it if protocols are new & changed on the server—then it is a server issue. Working out the bugs.

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Answer 3

Andrew_Peace Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 9, 2020 12:48 PM in response to leroydouglas

Thanks Leroy,

My wife's email provider (BT in the UK) has relocated it's email services on a different server. The emails are disappearing as they download to the iMac using Apple Mail. You get the message that an email is downloading from the Web server but it never arrives. There is no record of the email anywhere - it even deletes the email from the Web server and the iPad and iPhone if delivered to these 2 devices when the iMac mail is offline. Connection Doctor shows no errors and both the previous and current versions of the servers used IMAP.

Why I think it's an Apple Mail issue is that I have downloaded a couple of other email programs (Thunderbird and Spark) and they work perfectly.

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Answer 4

Andrew_Peace Author

Level 1

8 points

Apr 9, 2020 12:54 PM in response to Andrew_Peace

Thanks Tesserax,

The email provider uses an IMAP type account. The previous version was also IMAP. The Mailbox behaviour settings are fine, it's just that most emails don't make it to the Inbox on the iMac. You get the message that they are being downloaded but then disappear without a trace never reaching the Inbox, deleting any copy of the email stored on the Web, iPhone and iPad. As I said to Leroy I think it's an Apple Mail issue as I have downloaded a couple of other email programs (Thunderbird and Spark) onto the iMac and they work perfectly.

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Emails disappearing in front of your eyes

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