MAC Mail not saving all sent items

This is another discussion of the same issue...

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2793143?start=30&tstart=0

From apple today

From: Josie Abela <jabela@apple.com>

Date: February 27, 2012 5:07:50 PM EST

To: snoone@me.com

Subject: Case 293231614

Hi Mitchell,

Got a response from engineering and they stated they have seem similar reports on this issue and are sending the issue to our mail team and that in the meantime to keep working with the email provider but on apple behalf the issue is under investigation. Hope this helps.

Thanks

Josie.

We are having the exact same issue and think we have found the cause although we do not have a workaround.

01.
When sending outgoing mail through an IMAP connection the message is delivered, however the Apple Mail client fails to copy the sent message to the 'Sent Messages' folder on the IMAP server and the message is lost forever!

Here is whats reported in the Console:

27/02/2012 10:22:45.572 Mail: Error (null) occurred while trying to append messages to outgoing store. Ignoring and proceeding with delivery...

02.

We have also tested this with the Microsoft Outlook for Mac Client software and are having the same issue, however Outlook reports the error "Unable to add message to IMAP mailbox. The corresponding local folder will be used instead." and we don't loose any messages.

03.

Thunderbird for Mac seems to work OK.

04.
We have tested on different machines and also tested it on a different network to rule out an ISP or firewall issue.

05.
Finally we have been in contact with the technical support team who maintain our mail server and they have identified the cause of this issue.

Here is the response from them:As discussed on the telephone, we have now identified the cause of this issue.
Our Intrusion Detection & Prevention (IDP) systems block the connection from your Email client when it attempts to store outgoing Emails, which contain attachments, to the users' 'Sent' folder.
This is due to the Mac OS/Mac Mail sending non-standard or erroneous commands to the server, emulating the activity which would be generated by an attacker attempting to abuse an exploit in the IMAP server.
Details of this are;

IMAP:EXPLOIT:CMD-FORMAT-STRING has been detected from xx.xxx.xxx.xx/xxxx to xxx.xxx.xxx.xx/xxx through policy 324 1 times.

This error-level signature provides protection to our network from the following type of attack;

Name: IMAP: Command Line Format String

Description: This signature detects attempts to exploit format string vulnerabilities through IMAP. Attackers can send a malformed commands prior to authentication. A successful attack can allow execution of arbitrary code.

So it seems that the Apple Mail or something else happening at the OS level may be sending non-standard commands to the mail server, causing the security software to block the connection.

Chris

I've forwarded your comments to the contact at apple I have been speaking to.. Could have some relevance however your email provider mentions (Our Intrusion Detection & Prevention (IDP) systems block the connection from your Email client when it attempts to store outgoing Emails, which contain attachments)

In our case the problem happens with mail having no attachments or not.. There is no pattern... For the moment I've unchecked save sent mail to server and havent had the issue since...

Hi Mitchell,

Thanks for forwarding our comments. The problem is happening when we have an attachment. When we don't include an attachment it seems to work ok. I'm not sure if its the size of the message or the attachment that causes this. Will maybe try and replicate the problemby creating a message with a large amount of text and see if that works.

We have switched to Thunderbird which seems ot work ok for the moment.

Same problem as outlined by many users.

I just sent Apple a feedback messege but who knows if they actually read them..anyways.. this is what I sent to Apple:

This seems to be a common issue amongst Mail users. I replied to an email a moment ago and went to review the sent message as I normally do and it was not there.. however, when I selected the reply button on the actual message I replied to (the “replied" arrow button right next to the senders name) it shows me my reply.. but once again.. not within “sent messages”.

Please fix this or provide a workaround as this has been an ongoing issue!

Thanks

M

Hi Everyone, I figured out what is the issue.

The Sent Items folder what you see is a local folder for you mac in the Mac Mail App.

If you observe in the left hand side box you will see an option to expand your Mail accounts that you added.

There you can see your actual sent items folder that is linked to your account ( Yahoo or Gmail ).

MAILBOXES

Inbox
Drafts

Sent ( This is Local Sent Items Folder on your MAC )

- Gmail

- Yahoo!

Trash

REMINDERS

- Flagged

- Notes

ON MY MAC

RSS

Gmail

- [GMail]

- All Mail

- Bin

- Sent Messages ( Actual Sent Items Folder for you GMail Account )

Yahoo!

- [Yahoo Mail]

- All Mail

- Bin

- Sent Messages ( Actual Sent Items Folder for you Yahoo Account )

are you joking ? that is nothing to do with the problem!

did you think maybe your having a different problem, and that the hundreds of people experiencing the _real_ problem, a lot of them experts, might just have looked at the stupid folders on the left ?

and if what you are saying made any sense at all, then it would happen all the time (as your saying it is intended functionality) not just sometimes, randomly. duh.

get real ... this problem is an issue with their mail application, it is well documented now and well known and there is no current 'fix' or solution. annoyingly.

At my office, we temporarily unchecked save sent mail to server.. The sent mail is now being saved locally and I havent had the problem since... However doing that defeats our use of IMAP mail .. I'd like to see that sent mail on all my devices..... C'mon apple, get it together and fix this

This is really annoying. Even when I uncheck "save sent mail to server" the bug still occur sometime. It is much less frequent, but I loose about 20% of my outgoing mail. (instead of 80% !!!!) I have also another bug : sometime the mail is stuck in the Drafts folder while still being sent. This is ridiculus !

Apple acknowledges this as an issue so maybe with the next software update we'll have a fix

goodness me this is annoying. and always happens to the most important emails of course!

just found the same message on my logs

09/04/2012 13:53:44.894 Mail: Error (null) occurred while trying to append messages to outgoing store. Ignoring and proceeding with delivery...

no attachments, but a forwarded email so maybe embedded images. can't say because i can't check 😉

yahoo imap on 10.7.3 mail. frustrated, will send a message to support now 😐

I received a message today from AT&T/Yahoo Mail claiming responsibility for the lost IMAP messages, and they seemed to know about and were able to recover them in the Sent folder (renaming the previous Sent folder to Sent Messages, which they forgot to mention) and in a new and temporary "Synched Messages" folder. It says they have fixed the issue. Time will tell. I had deselected the "Preferences/Accounts/Mailbox Behaviors/Store sent messages on the server" option recently, until now.

Update. While AT&T did recover the lost messages from weeks and months ago, new messages are still being lost as before. Long wait, swoosh, nothing in sent folder. Will reply to AT&T and see what they say. The ball is still in Apple's court.

it is certainly apple's problem.

it happens to me all the time, and i use corporate pro services from rackspace (mailtrust), dedicated mail servers with full management and support.

before snow leopard it never happened, not even once.