macOS Catalina Mail ‘The message “[Message Subject]” could not be moved to the mailbox “Personal”’ . . .

I believe the RMs are related to rules: many of those timed-out errors occurred while attempting to move a message into a “Personal” mailbox (see the first two screenshots at the top of this thread) that it had been “moved to” by a rule months before. After all my rules had been disabled, the server began “Moving Messages” by the thousands — many of them in batches that repeated more than ten times — and churning out those timed-out errors by the dozen. often four or five errors for the same message. This went on for days. So how did the server (?) know that a message belonged in that “Personal” mailbox? Maybe because a rule had filed it there originally and tagged the message accordingly?

Why did disabling my rules cause all that reshuffling? Apple doesn’t have much to say about recovered messages. No, I did not upgrade my system. Yes, I did rebuild the mailboxes the RMS belonged in. The “RM iCloud” mailbox has filled up countless times since I changed the rules’ action and then disabled or deleted rules altogether. FYI, despite the rules being disabled, Mail seems to “remember” which folder that message belongs in:

In my retirement, I will investigate mysteries like this.:) Right now, I need a diagram of how Mail maps IMAP folders from other ISPs. Should I create folders on EL Webmail: at the “Top Level” or in the Inbox? Where does Mail expect them to be?

I apologize for the misunderstanding.

The "Recovered Messages (iCloud)" are under "On My Mac." The folders I would move those recovered messages to are under "iCloud.”

I posted earlier this week and received no replies. In that post, the "local folders" I refer to are the ones under "iCloud." After going through every setting in the Mail preferences / Accounts with EL Tier 3 TS, they said that the "Move To" action in my rules was removing messages from their server; I had to change my rules to "Copy To," which I did. One EL account was flooded with thousands of duplicate messages that I had to delete manually in order to avoid exceeding my quota. EL Tier 3 said that this flooding was due to iCloud “backloading" — whatever that is — and I needed to take that EL account offline for a few hours, which I did. Email was still not being saved on their server.

I also deleted rules set up on iCloud Webmail for the iPhones to eliminate them as potential factors. I checked the iMac rules yesterday morning and found that every single one of them had reverted from "Copy To" to "Move To." I disabled or deleted all the rules on the iMac to eliminate them as potential factors.

My husband started receiving email normally from his EL account last week; I don't know what achieved that result. I am no longer receiving (2) copies of messages. Neither account’s messages are being retained on EL servers per IMAP.

I still don’t know if EL’s theory that the "Move To" action was the cause of messages not staying on their server, but the evidence so far says they are mistaken.

I’ve taken pages and pages of notes documenting all this since I called EL on Aug. 29 to find out why my husband, whose EL account we both access, stopped receiving his email altogether on Aug. 1st while I continued to receive messages from his account without interruption.

I’ve consulted Apple TS two or three times in the past week. They say this is all EL’s problem, get them to fix it or change providers.

I don’t know enough to argue with EL; I’m caught between the proverbial blah blah and don’t know what to do next. Changing providers may not solve the problem if I don’t know what I did or didn’t do to cause this six-week-long nightmare.

I don't think that what I expected was in any way unusual: to have the three accounts sync across the iMac and two iPhones and leave the originals on the providers’ servers. Is it impossible?

If you introduced iCloud into the mix you didn't need to, or are we talking about an actual w****@icloud.com account or such?

Yes, I have an @icloud.com account, and a mac.com account (inactive) and a couple of other dead ones going back to the Paleolithic.

What do you mean by “introduce”? I really can’t remember, but the /iCloud mailboxes might have been created years ago when Mail was strictly POP. Every time I bought a new Mac they would give me a new address. I stilll use a @me.com as my primary address. You can’t imagine the mess this has caused in my iTunes library.

Not sure why you're marking them as read, that should happen by itself by being evaluated by rules... do you mean to mark it as unread until Human Eyes see it?

Marking messages as “read” before moving/filing them means that I never have to see them; they go straight into their assigned folder. My husband gets mail from people and publications, etc. that are of professional importance only to him. Before you ask, I access his EL account because he’s a Luddite; he saves lives but he doesn’t get involved with the nuts and bolts. If a message gets mislaid, or he needs to write a lengthy reply, or there’s any kind of technical hiccup, I handle it for him painlessly on my own device(s).

In the one pic where it shows "On My Mac" set for trash of an EL account...NO, trash should always be set to the same account it is in... EL_WB*

Is this correct? I changed this in the other EL account’s settings.

I might understand better on what to suggest, if I knew exactly what you wanted to accomplish.

My husband and I are both getting our email regularly now, though we have to “file” messages manually. That is a huge relief. What I want to accomplish:

• my EL accounts should perform according to IMAP protocol and store messages — incoming, outgoing, Drafts, Sent — on their server, and
• be able to use iMac Mail rules to move/file messages in local folders, and have those moves sync’ed on EL Webmail and all our devices.

There are no rules in effect now but EL messages are still not being stored on the server. If you don’t see anything in my Mail setup that could cause this, then EL’s claim that the “Move To:" action in my rules was deleting messages from their server is bogus. If that’s true, I can confidently tell EL that the problem is on their end and insist that they stop leading me down the garden path and fix it.

I hardly know how to thank you for seeing me through this far. I’m in your debt, big time.

[Edited by Moderator]

If you mean the EL folders mirrored on the Mac within that account, then yes

That is what I mean.

Should be OK now.

Wonderful news!

The one Smart Folder I created last week shows (2) Unread messages that don’t exist. I have tried to find them every way imaginable — filtering, physically clicking on every message, selecting everything in the folder and trying to "Mark as Read" — and it hasn’t changed. I will try rebuilding it. If no joy there, I will follow your instructions here. Maybe smart mailboxes are too advanced for me. :)

Vielen Dank, mille fois merci, grazie molto.

I don't use a browser, I use the macOS Mail client. I might be able to move them, but to where? The folders they would normally be filed into by rules?

Interestingly, there is nothing in those messages. Cmd+Opt+U brings up a completely blank screen.

As of right now 20h ET, there are no messages in the On My Mac / "Recovered Messages (iCloud)" folder. "Moving Messages" is still busy, though the number of messages to be moved is literally a fraction of what it was this morning:

No server errors for the past 4 hours. That problem seems to have worked itself out as the number of recovered messages declined. I would get eight or ten server errors about the same message sometimes. The relationship between the "moving messages" and the server errors is a mystery to me. I’d love to understand what happened.

And thank you for replying to my question.

Thanks so much for the moral, as well as the technical, support. :)

Below are screenshots of the “Mailboxes” sidebar in iMac Mail:

These are screenshots of one EL account’s preferences which are exactly the same for both EL accounts.

I do not have any mailboxes on the EL server(s) other than the ones you see at the bottom of the “Mailboxes” sidebar. I understand that all my rules will need to be organized and rewritten to sort messages based on "To:" domain instead of the "From:" domain and moved into mailboxes that do not yet exist on EL’s server..

As you already know, on 09.28 – 09.29, I changed the "Move To" action to "Copy To" in all the rules, as instructed by EL Tier 3 TS, so that messages would remain on the EL server. As far as I can tell, the change had no effect on EL's server behavior at all.

Between 09.29 and 10.03, knowing that not all the folders created on one EL Webmail account would be needed on the other, I moved some subfolders for the same reason.

On 10.07, all the rules spontaneously reverted from "Copy To" to "Move To," and folder names and location changes made to some rules reverted to their pre-10.03 status moved and/or changed some of the folders” names; as a consequence, many reverted rules have incorrect folders for the “Move To” action.

On 10.09, I disabled all the rules on the iMac. The "message could not be moved" server errors began appearing about 30 minutes later. There’s nothing very interesting going on in these rules:

Yes, the iCloud mailboxes are duplicated and synchronized across the iMac Mail and both iPhone Mail apps.

I hope you have everything you asked for. Please let me know if you don’t, or if you need other material.

The “Moving Messages" countdown in the iMac Mail Activity window was empty at 09h.

There are (18) messages in the "On My Mac/Recovered Messages (iCloud)" mailbox. They are old messages, they have normal content and they already exist in iCloud/mailboxes. Should I move/file them to the appropriate iCloud/mailboxes again?

The Smart Mailboxes/230101–231001_Email_Archive shows (2) unread messages. I have filtered that mailbox for unread messages: none. I have selected them all and Ctrl+clicked but the "Mark as Read" option isn’t there. Should I “Rebuild” this smart mailbox?

There are still no messages being retained in the Webmail Inbox of either EL account.

I have questions about how to configure the IMAP settings on these accounts. in order to enable sync'ing:

What about the iMac Mail Preferences/Mailbox Behavior for EL accounts: Where should I store Drafts, Sent messages, Junk/"Known Spam" and Trash so that drafts and sent messages are accessible to all users and devices? 

Should I create mailboxes/folders for filing messages on the Earthlink Webmail accounts and subscribe to them in the iMac Mail?

Will creating these EL mailboxes solve the problem of EL messages not being retained on the server when iMac Mail rules are applied? 

After rules are applied and messages are successfully moved locally to EL account mailboxes, will the changes be reflected in the EL Webmail accounts’ mailboxes? 

Will the EL account mailboxes show up in the iPhone’s Mail app? Can I use iCloud rules to file messages in those iPhone Mail mailboxes?

I’ve already tried filtering for Unread messages, etc. I decided to just delete the smart mailbox; I don't need it anymore.

This morning there were (18) messages in the “/On My Mac/Recovered Messages (iCloud)” mailbox. I moved them all to /iCloud/ mailboxes. An hour ago (148) messages appeared in that Recovered Messages mailbox. I was able to move them all out again. 15 minutes later there were (10) messages in that folder and seconds after I took a screenshot of them, the messages spontaneously disappeared. It’s been about half an hour and no more recovered messages have shown up. I’m clueless.