Mail not showing new messages in inbox

summer14, In case you haven't resolved this yet.

polzbert's solustion is excellent, assuming you have a backup drive using Time Machine. However, did you try rebuilding the inbox? If not, here's how:

Select the mail box that's giving you trouble in the left pane of Apple Mail. Then choose "rebuild" iunder the Mailbox Menu Item. This has resolved countless mailbox glitches for me in the past.

Wow, thank you Charles! Your rebuild has fixed my problem which was a little different from the above. I too was having the issue on my laptop where I had notice that there were new messages but none appeared in the inbox.

Glad it worked for you. :-)

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.

Anyway, if all else fails, try to see if you have a corrupted email message on your server.

Yes, good point, that can cause such things, thanks for the post! 🙂

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

This works! It's amazing! thanks for that!

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!

Dear a12c4,

There have been many glitches since the move to iCoud. I'm not a fan either. I was much happier with Mobile Me and I'm deeply distressed at the loss of iDisk and some other great features.

Recently my Iphone refused to retrieve my email and I had to do some major tweaking to both my MacBook (running Lion) and my Original iPhone still running IOS 3.1.3 which is no longer supported.

Things to check:

1. The new incoming mail server for iCloud has changed (at least in my case). It is: p03.imap.mail.com
2. The SMTP server appears to be the same: smtp.me.com
3. New Apple ID email addresses must now include "me.com." If you're still using an old "mac.com" address in some of your settimgs, that can cause some issues as well.
4. Also, Apple requires a new password format with 8 characters, one cap, numbers and all that crap. So - if you have changed you Apple ID on the main iCloud server/account, be sure that you change it in Apple Mail and all other apps requiring your Apple ID password, ie. iPhoto, iTunes, the App Store, etc.
5. Another note - you MUST upgrade to Lion, or the newest IOS on iPhone/iPad before June 30th if you want to keep any "me.com/mac.com" email addresses.

*****, doesn't it?

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.