Apple Mail: Original emails disappear after reply

Question

Level 1

69 points

Apple Mail: Original emails disappear after reply

Some emails are disappearing in Apple Mail.

Specifically, it seems to be the original message when a message gets replied to.

Today I have two messages that are replies, with the previous email below the reply. In both cases, there is no trace of the original email that I received before the reply. They (the originals) just seem to disappear as soon as the reply drops into my inbox.

I've scoured my junk folder & bin, I've checked in my iCloud to see if the message is still there in the cloud & I've read a couple of articles about various filtering settings, all to no avail.

This isn't the first time it's happened. It's not (yet) a regular occurance but late last year I couldn't find an email & I put it down to user error. But I'm just not this careless to have it happen twice in as many days & under exactly the same circumstances: An email that's been replied to.

Is this a known bug? A deliberate feature?

If anyone has any suggestions, I would be very grateful to hear them.

I'm running Sequoia 15.7.3 on an Apple M1 Max Macbook Pro with Apple Mail version 16

MacBook Pro 15″, macOS 13.7

Posted on Feb 26, 2026 4:03 AM

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Answer 1

Zurarczurx

Level 5

4,606 points

Feb 26, 2026 4:23 AM in response to del.frost

I've never seen this and I don't run Tahoe so the following are what I'd do if it happened to me, not known fixes. BTW - Who's your ISP?

Rebuild the Mailbox (Menu bar - Mailbox/Rebuild)

Turn off Organize by conversations (View/Organize by Conversation)

Open the account settings (Mail/Settings/Accounts -- NOT Mail/Accounts) and check the mailbox behaviours. There normally aren't any other than deleting junk and bins after a certain time, but I don't know who your ISP is so there might be others.

Check your Webmail settings in a browser and make sure that there isn't a setting that's making this happen

Have you got any mail rules set that might be doing this?

Stupid question - sorry - , but if you're using IMAP then if you delete them on your phone/ipad then you know they'll be deleted on the Mac too?

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Answer 2

Zurarczurx

Level 5

4,606 points

Feb 26, 2026 5:16 AM in response to del.frost

Turn off /View/Show Related Messages. if it's off then turn it on. The "lost " message might appear when you view the reply.

In Mail/Settings/Viewing untick all the settings for "View Conversations" even if you're not using conversations.

I can get similar behaviour to yours by messing with Show Related Messages and View Conversations. If you've got two different email addresses you can use then you can play and troubleshoot. By 'different' I mean on different ISPs. Reason for this is that it might not work for messages that have already disappeared.

Or, a better option, wait for someone to come along who actually knows what they're doing. The US will be up and about soon.

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Answer 3

del.frost Author

Level 1

69 points

Feb 26, 2026 4:47 AM in response to Zurarczurx

Thanks for these suggestions.

1) I'm not sure what Tahoe has to do with anything. Neither of us are using it (although my Mac does keep trying to force me to update.)

2) I'm a bit scared to rebuild the mailbox. Sounds like a million other things could go wrong.

3) Turning off "organise by conversation" did not reveal the missing email, only the three that are replies to it.

4) There are no spurious bevaiours, although I did notice that "leave junk messages in inbox" was selected but Mail always moves my junk mail to the junk folder.

5) I'll do the browser check as soon as I can

6) There are no rules.

7) If that had happened, would they still not be there in the trash?

I'm in the UK & my ISP is Virgin Media but I've only recently changed & this was also happening when my ISP was Sky.

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