Mail not showing new messages in inbox

One day, I noticed that my mail.app wasn't retrieving or showing me my new messages. I have a mobileme account, which pushed and showed me new emails on my iphone but they're not showing up in my mail application. I have 3 mail accounts (mobilme, exchange, and gmail) and none are syncing but all say that they are online. There is no alert ( ! ) symbol next to any account.

Every time I try to check for new mail the Mail Activity in the bottom left corner shows 57 of 57 incoming emails (and keeps rising every day) but nothing is showing up in my inbox. It also makes the no-new-messages sound.

I control clicked each mail account on the left side panel and clicked Get Info. It showed me ALL of my new messages that it wasn't showing in my inbox but I couldn't open them and if I clicked on them, it only gave me the option to Remove From Server. So I assume it's getting all my new mail but it's now showing me in my inbox or anywhere else I can find that I have new unread messages. Also, there are no little red numbers indicated the number of unread messages on my Mail icon.

I've looked in other forums but nothing seems to be working. I tried to uncheck the SSL box and made sure the port was 110 but that just made things worse and took my exchange account offline so I undid that. Right now, SSL is checked and the port reads 995. The authentication is NTLM. I have a feeling that it might not be those connection settings that are wrong because I didn't change anything before the problem presented itself. I also tried the connection doctor (Mail>Window>Connection Doctor) and it said everything is connecting just fine.

Mail has been doing this for a month now! Please help!!!

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Sep 30, 2010 10:33 PM

Reply
105 replies

Sep 26, 2013 9:21 AM in response to summer14

hello,

similar issues and more than i can figure out:


have 2 gmail accounts, one using my domain as the subaccount. i am able to send (swoosh) from my macbook, but the gmail email ends up nowhere, but does land on the gmail server as SENT mail, not in my inbox. on my mac it shows tha tit was sent in my sent folder, but WHERE did this email land? i've tried enabling/disabling POP (it's an IMAP acct.), no filters. have rebulit mailbox. nothing.


as well, the google mail interface ***** and is awkward. my mail lands in ALL mail, not the inbox, and i'm unsure how to change that. settings doesn't seem to have an option for incoming mail landing in the INbox.

Oct 15, 2013 2:31 AM in response to Puli0003

Thank you puli003... I have been trying to fix my emails for days... Apple Support couldn't even help. My mail activity box was showing mail downloading but no appearance in my inbox. Went to the "Get Account Info" and sure enough the "unkown sender" was there.. As soon as I removed it from the server all my emails loaded into the inbox... Again thanks for posting...

Dec 4, 2013 7:07 AM in response to Waterboy

I was having this same issue on my iMac, OS Mtn. Lion, and iPhone. Turns out, with the help of some of the info in this thread, I discovered I had an email in my inbox on my mail server with a back slash in the subject line. It was not coming into my inbox and keeping all other emails after it from coming through. Used the "Get Info," deleted the offending email, and all of my messages came in. Thanks to all for the suggestions.

Dec 13, 2013 9:25 AM in response to summer14

I have been having the same problem usig MacMail. I got so frustrated that I decided to use Airmail. I have not had any problems with Airmail. But, going back to MacMail, the only way for me to get new messages is to close MacMail and reopen it. The problem is that not getting new mail happens so sporadically that I can't seem to find out what the problem is. It will happen sometimes at home but not other times; sometimes at the university where I teach but not other times and sometimes at my office but not other times. I use two gmail accounts and one exchange account. When this problem does happen, it affects all three accounts at the same time. Oh, and this started when I upgraded to Marvericks. I have the most recent versions of both the mail and Mavericks. Very strange.

Dec 13, 2013 10:25 AM in response to ronroyer

Dear Ronroyer,


Since I haven't upgraded to Mavericks (10.9) yet, I can only be of limited help.


You mention multiple locations, but not multiple computers.Are all of these issues occurring on one computer? The fact that it sometime affects all your email accounts at the same time leads me to believe that there's an issues in your Apple Mail preferences. You can try going into your library and removing "MailAccount.plist." Keep the file on your desktop. Don't delete it.


Note: you may have to use the following info to make your library visible. <http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/mavericks-easily-make-user-library-folder -visible>


Here's the path:


YourAccount/library/ApplicationSupport/Mail/OnlineAccountTypes/com.apple.updated .mailaccounts/MailAccounts.plist



After removing the file, restart your computer and launch Apple Mail. It should rebuild the "MailAccounts.plist" file. If not, you still have it on your desktop. Experiment with Mail for a while and see if the problem persists.


Good luck.

Dec 13, 2013 12:51 PM in response to ronroyer

Hey Ron - About 3 weeks ago I spent a couple of hours on the phone with Apple Support about this issue because it is also sporadic on my new MBP that came pre-installed with Mavericks i.e 'Get Info' generally does still work but then I can miss mail for several hours before it appears in my inbox. On my iPad and iPhone there are NO such issues (mail appears when it is sent). The end result was that the Apple Support guys said that apparently it's mainly an issue with users with multiple Gmail accounts and/or with large amount of emails (10,000+). Apple know about it and are working on the fix and I for one can't wait until that happens to get back to the way it was.

Mar 25, 2014 6:45 AM in response to KMSquaredLLC

Hello


I am not sure how your situation differs from the one that we had with a customer but I am more than willing to provide some tech support the easiest was for us to fix your issue or help with your issue is through remote session my company is Geeks For You you can google it to make sure we are legit. Other than that It would be hard without some screenshots.

Apr 11, 2014 3:28 AM in response to MyLuxLife

Dear MyLuxLife, you are a genius! Your solution fixed my problem also. Thank you.

MyLuxLife wrote:


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.

Apr 25, 2014 10:41 AM in response to MyLuxLife

Thank you!!! After a month of looking for solutions I ran across your comment:


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.


Its a GREAT day now!!

Oct 28, 2014 9:30 PM in response to NeilShapiro

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've been going crazy with this for weeks now. Same problem. Only one account of three wouldn't retrieve mail, but iPhone and iPad working just fine. Web mail, just fine. Tried absolutely everything. I couldn't actually find any messages on the server that /looked/ corrupt, so ended up just deleting everything in my server inbox. Now it's working properly again, and the mysterious thousands of messages popping up in "Mail Activity" have disappeared. Very pleased. Thanks again.

Dec 2, 2014 12:23 PM in response to summer14

Fixed this problem on iphone 5.



symptoms...

Can create new and send ( successfully ).

No new email appears - inbox remains empty



email folders all present ( all empty )



tried resetting iphone - no effect

tried deleting email account and recreating - no effect

tried removing iCloud - no effect.



eventually, held finger on inbox for around 5 seconds - everything came back to life.



hope this helps

Dec 22, 2014 10:16 AM in response to summer14

My problem is even weirder! I can not get Mail to show a particular email, but others are appearing. The email I am expecting is from a trusted source and I have had no trouble receiving it in the past until today. It has been sent to two different addresses of mine, and I can see it on the servers when I use "get info".


I am able to download it to my iPad, just not to my iMac. I have tried all the solutions mentioned here, except removing the com.apple.mail.plist preference because that file does not appear in my library for some reason.


Any ideas would be welcome.

Dec 22, 2014 1:12 PM in response to Gary Howes

Hi Gary, have you tried this?


Safe Boot, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, reboot when it completes.


(Safe boot may stay on the gray radian for a long time, let it go, it's trying to repair the Hard Drive & clear caches.)


Restart & open Mail, highlight that account & chose Rebuild from Mail's Mailbox menu item.


If that fails...


Make a new Smart Mailbox that only includes Unread Mails, do they show in that Smartbox?

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Mail not showing new messages in inbox

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