Mail not showing new messages in inbox

I tried similar solutions to no effect with an identical problem. I then did a full restore from Time Machine of my entire system back a few days to before this problem. Guess what? Problem was still there. Crazy! My iPhone 4 and iPad 2 retrieved my email fine. I used Get Info in the Mac mailbox that did not display. I saw there was a message from an "unknown user." I used the web interface on my email and I deleted a block of messages including that one. I started Mail up and it immediately began to work again. There appears to be some way that an email can be corrupted on the server and cause this problem on Mac Mail although not on the IOS devices. Anyway, if all else fails, try to see if you have a corrupted email message on your server.

I had this problem and it was fixed with a call to Apple this way (which resets the Mail app and forces it to reload all data):

Double click on home button at bottom of ipad screen - this brings up a bar of apps at the bottom

Press Mail ap until it start to jiggle

Press cross on this ap to delete it

Press Home button again to go back to normal home screen and press Mail again

For me, that fixed the problem

Hi there - can someone please tell me if i am to take the advice from this page (which looks great!) to fix up the disappearing mail... when i am asked to open a mac account again do i lose my existing emails?? it seems like i am starting up fresh again and i am scared to lose all of my work to date

Please let me know if anyone has an idea of this

thanks

Sue

Dear Suefromlosangeles

It depends. The threads here seem to have wandered a bit from Mac OS to IOS used on the iPhone and iPad.

I'll assume your issue is with Mac OS running on an apple computer.

If the mail in any of your boxes does not appear "normal" or fails appear at all, start with a simple rebuild:

Select the mailbox that is acting strangely, then choose menu item "Mailbox/Rebuild."

If that doesn't work, read the suggestions of polzbertMar 9, 2011 12:23 AM and use a copy of your "com.apple.mail.plist" from a Time Machine backup that was made before your issues appeared.

Hope this helps. :-)

Thank you Charles.. but i am a little too scared to rebuild in case i lose everything... i cant afford to lose the mail as i used to have entourage and that crashed and burned and took 8 years of work away from my computer...

😟

Thanks though for taking the time to respond

Best

Sue

Sue,

Coraggio! The "Rebuild" action in Apple Mail is quite different than the rebuild of the User Database in Entrtouage/Outloook Express. Keep in mind that these are Microsoft creations and thus fraught with disaster. :-)

Are you using Time Machine? Do you have backup? If not, backup your crucial emails and rebuild as I described before. I have never known the Rebuild command in Apple Mail to be a destructive function.

Here are a couple more tips: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/answers/how_to_clean_up_and_rebuild_apple_mail_da ta/

Good luck and be brave.

Hi Charles

sorry i didnt see this response... i just logged in to see if anyone had come back with a suggestion... i will look into your suggestion and try it later in the week

Thanks so much again!

best

Sue

Same problem. Since switching to icloud no more email on my G5. Works on everything else which have been updated but not on desktop still runing on OS 10.6.8. ????? Apple is changing....Not for the best!

I was having the same problem as listed in the original post. Highlighting the mail account and selecting "Get Info" with a right click showed all the new messages on the server that were not showing up in my Mac mail inbox. I saw one e-mail with "sender unknown". I deleted it from the server and all my new mail showed up right after the deletion. It seems one bad e-mail on the server can mess everything up.

Try checking your email server limit has not been reached. You'd think they would email you automatically when you were near to the limit rather than it all go wrong and then have to waste time and money providing support... too easy! MW

Grehund,

Glad it worked for you. Apple seems to have worked out many of the bugs in Apple Mail since Mountain Lion and I applaud them for harmonizing the integration of iOS, iCloud and Mac OS - not a simple task.

I too have been having issues with mail not showing. In my case, it seems to be my exchange account mostly, and my IMAP ones are fine. I had figured out that rebuilding the mailbox solves it, however for me, it is a temporary fix. My mail keeps disappearing (but shows in searches) intermittently. I personally have not been able to figure out how to permanently fix this, however this is just at least a way to get around it.

Dustin,

I've never used an Exchange Sever Account, but a little research leads me to believe that it could be a buggy protocol. Is this a business/organizational account? If so, perhaps the server admin can give you a few tips to customize your Apple Mail settings. Just an idea. Good luck. ;-)

In this case, I am the admin. 🙂 The protocol over all is not what I would call buggy. There mostly seems to be issues with clients that are not Outlook. ha ha. But yes, this is my corporate account. It has only started happening recently with apple mail, and particularly on my own install. Waiting to get my hands on another mac, blow it away and see where that goes.

Ramonago,

That's what I'd suspect as well - a glitch between Yahoo and Apple Mail. Or even more likely, a glitch in the Yahoo mail server. The SSL settings can be tricky. Some serves balk - others don't. I had a nightmarish time trying to coordinate a friend's "rocketmail" account (a subset of Yahoo, I believe) with Apple Mail. Finally I created a Gmail account and washed my hands of it.

You have an Apple ID, right? I'd create a "me.com" mali account based upon your Apple ID. I've had a "mac.com" and/or "me.com" for well over a decade and I've had very few issues. That's my paltry two cents. :-)