I am on a MacBook Pro and use Apple Mail. I've created about 20 different smart mailboxes for important mail and record keeping. I've had them in place for about a year. All of a sudden today, they are gone! They are not hidden, but gone. I don't get it. How can they be gone? Can these folders be repopulated in some way? I don't know the file structure.
MacBook Pro (2017 – 2020)
Are you sure they are gone? Most likely they are just hidden...
Hover your cursor near "Smart Mailboxes" and you should see a "+" and ">"
Click on ">" and it should switch to "V" and disclose your smart mailboxes.
Start with this of M1 or M2 Mac...
On your Mac, choose Apple menu > Shut Down.
Wait for your Mac to shut down completely. A Mac is completely shut down when the screen is black and any lights (including in the Touch Bar) are off.
Press and hold the power button on your Mac until “Loading startup options” appears.
Select a volume.
Press and hold the Shift key, then click Continue in Safe Mode.
The computer restarts automatically. When the login window appears, you should see “Safe Boot” in the menu bar.
Restart normally.
Start with this if IntelMac...
Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at startup), does the problem occur in Safe Mode? Could take 10 minutes or more.
Safe mode attempts to repair Disks & clears lots of caches & loads safe Drivers, & prevents loading of 3rd party extensions, so if Safe Mode works try again in regular boot.
Any change?
Hmmm, Smart boxes or smart folders se Spotlight, but to lose the rules completely would require either som corruption or suspicious activity from some installed software, Are you running any VPN, Anti-Virus, or Cleaning apps?
Try one of these two…
You can use Drive DX to possibly get a better view of Drive health…
https://binaryfruit.com/drivedx
Thanks to Jack-19…
It may be wise to run SMART Utility to check the drives' health.
Today Mail app crashed then when it reopenned all custom settings were gone: Smart Mailboxes, signatures, rules. Basically, it's like using someone else's mailbox. Not very professional to end an email with just my name and no branding.
Have anyone ever experienced it and found a solution? I've been coveying those from laptop to laptop through Time Machine since 2008... I kind of feel lost without it.
Nicolas
As I said, they are not hidden. Been through all the basic trouble shooting. This is some kind of crash of the software. Not possible to do a one click delete of all the smart mailboxes at once.
Thanks. Already tried that to no success.
Same thing happened to me just today.
Apple Mail Smart mailboxes gone
