Big Sur mail: Inboxes missing from sidebar

The same thing happened to me. I was dinking around with the Sidebar and my Unified Inbox vanished. Like many things Apple, fine-tuning can be hidden. If you specifically click the + next to Favorites in the Sidebar, you are given a dialog with a list of Mailboxes. If you click this Mailboxes list, the top item will be "All Inboxes". Selecting this will restore the "Unified inbox" and it will live under Favorites. It's subtle, but it is there. Whew!

What just worked for me when All Inboxes disappeared and the + was grayed out was to go next to the + sign and click on the small down caret (looks like a v) next to it. When I did that the All Inboxes reappeared from the dropdown menu that appeared.

I was having the same problem and I finally figured it out.

Select the mail app then go to the upper left hand corner.

Select: view>show mailbox list.

Hope this helps someone!

Did you upgrade from Catalina? I'm seeing the Mailboxes you mention with Catalina but not with Big Sur.

Catalina:

Big Sur

I did a clean install and don't remember seeing "Mailboxes" with Big Sur. In fact it looks like Favorites has replaced and expanded the functionality of "Mailboxes". It still has All Inboxes (mine are collapsed in the screenshot) but you can also add a unified "All Trash", "All Junk" etc.

Checking the Big Sur Help files vs the Catalina Help files, they show the same.

The behavior is the same. Click on "All Inboxes" (Big Sur) and you see a unified inbox just like clicking "Mailboxes" with Catalina.

Clicking any individual Mailbox under that shows you just that inbox (for both).

Will the "Favorites" All Inboxes work for you?

ivan

Go to Favourites. Press plus sign; Add Favourite box appears. From drop down men, find and add All Inboxes.

Normally, to add the "All Inboxes", click the (+) sign to the right of the "Favorites" header.

Then from the Favorites pop-up, select and add "All Inboxes". It should be dark and selectable if not currently active.

Since you state you see all the Mailboxes usually under "All Inboxes" I'm wondering why you don't see that. If you can't remove then re-add them, maybe Rebuild the Mailboxes under the Mailbox menu.

ivan

Howdy,

Are you talking about the Mailboxes under Favorites? I don't think you can remove the Favorites header itself, but if you want to use the Favorites Bar instead, you can collapse the Favorites in the side bar with the little "expand/collapse" icon you see when you hover over the Favorites header.

If you do remove a Favorite from the Sidebar it is also removed from the Favorites Bar.

You can add them back by clicking the little (+) in the Favorites Header (again, hover over the header), then in the Favorites pop-up menu, select and add them back in.

See, Use favorite mailboxes in Mail on Mac

ivan

My experience was similar after upgrading to Big Sur and still not fixed. The mail sidebar started with Favorites and then All Sent, All Junk, All Trash, All Draft with my 3 email accounts showing under each category. NONE OF THE MAILBOX INBOXES ARE SHOWING. Been on with Apple for about a week troubleshooting. It seems Big Sur kept the old mail app and installed the new mail app. When I would open mail it would open both old and new mail app but wouldn't let me close either one. Each time I had to go to Forced Quit (which btw was showing the mail app was working) and close it that way. At times I couldn't even open mail at all. We have reinstalled IOS, we have wiped the entire computer and reinstalled from Time Machine. The problem persisted. It's on the 4th tier of experts (engineering I believe) and waiting for phone followup. When I opened it today I found the mailboxes with each category (inBox, Sent, Trash, etc) under On My Mac. If I try to move them up to Favorites they don't appear with the redesigned logo and each category (InBox, Sent, etc) don't shop up under the email name.

I have the same problem. The Inboxes are gone "all of the sudden" from the top of the sidebar menu. I have to drag the inbox up to the "favorites" so that I can see all of the mailboxes' inboxes in one spot. I've tried everything to bring them back but to no avail.

Same issue here. Not only has the All Inbox disappeared, the mailboxes are no longer collapsible, and even the Command-1 shortcut to display the all mail inbox does not work.

Have to confess installed Spark as a welcome alternative to what is now 2 hours of head scratching.

I have read all the very helpful sounding responses to the issue of inboxes missing from sidebar. I have tried all suggestions. Nothing has worked. The closest is

1) clicked on Favourites

2) pop up box invites to select a mailbox to add to your favourites

3) clicked down green v

4) all bins, all junk, all archive appear in bold black, the rest eg all inboxes appear in gray

5) clicked on 'all bins' - it immediately went gray and disappeared

6) below all this a @and name of one of my inbox/sent folders appeared. I clicked on arrow at rhs & 'sent, bin, junk' appeared in bold black while "archive, inbox, drafts' are in grey

Completely at a loss. Really disappointed I upgraded to Big Sur. It is causing me a huge stress and disruption to how I normally - an efficiently work

Any help appreciated

Same issue, no solution found.