MAC Mail not saving all sent items

This solution worked for me - ta.

I am new to Mac and suffering the same problem. None of my accounts rely on web products like gmail or yahoo.

Is there a suggested fix that works. I read most of this thread but cannot find it. This is so bad for my business!

What is the problem you are having? Many people think they are having the problem that the original poster identified, but simply have their mail misconfigured.

The original problem is when Mac mail saves *most* sent items just fine, but occasionally drops one. If you are losing *all* your sent mail, then you likely just have your mail misconfigured.

Occasional mails

Well, then congratulations! You have the same problem, and as far as I know, there isn't a fix.

That being said, I haven't had this issue in a long time. I haven't done anything to fix it, but it doesn't seem to happen with any of my 3 accounts any more (yahoo, google, and work email).

Note that in all cases I've seen, the mail goes through, even if it doesn't get stored to your sent folder. This isn't great, but at least you know that it goes.

Actually, there is a fix!

This issue plagued me for a full year. If you read my previous note it will help you understand the problem. It has to do with the actual .plist file: ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist

Multiple email accounts in Mail.app, causes the issue to appear. The order in which the accounts appear in this file causes the problem. In my case, I couldn't keep any of my sent from one account until I finally manually edited the .plist file. I sent logs upon logs to Apple trying to help them find the problem. They finally closed the case without a solution.

I have since verified that in most cases, you can manually drag folders around in the folder area and fix the problem. In my case, I had to fix the plist file with an editor.

To fix the problem using the folder area: Make sure that the mail server you're not getting sent from is at top of each section. Meaning if you have two servers: Mail1 and Mail2, and sent is being lost for mail2, move mail2 to the top of each section (i.e. Inbox, Sent, and location of the servers in the folder list). If this doesn't work for you, you might have to edit your plist file like I did. If so, read my previous post.

I've had this Bug Report in on this for over a year, and I finally fixed it myself. When I told them I fixed it, they finally asked for the fix, and I sent them the details, hopefully the next release they their bug and repair these issue automatically.

This is not the problem I had. I had the case where my yahoo, gmail, or work emails would save properly to their sent folders.

But occasionally (every 1 in 100 or so), a sent mail would NOT save, it happened on all 3 accounts. When it would happen, the send would take a LONG time. I would hear the "swoosh" sound, but no sent mail appeared in the sent folder. The mail would actually go out, but the recording of the sent mail did not happen.

I think it has to do with when Mac Mail tries to save the copy in the sent folder, it has some kind of failure, but does not retry. But there is no other copy of the mail, so it's lost.

Your issue seemed to be pretty reproducible. Mine is not, like I said, once in a blue moon.

I see. I was almost having the opposite problem... Once in a blue moon one would get saved. :-)

I believe that Sent goes through the IMAP port and the outbound goes through SMTP port and maybe IMAP is having a connection issue at the time. We often see queued requests fail if Mail.app has too many in it's buffer. (Example: people copying large numbers of files from folder to folder and only half get there because something times out on the server) I now watch the Activity Window much more often. Or it could still be related to the different accounts. The reason I suspect this is; if I was clicked on different folders, and sent mail, I'd see various strange behaviors with sent messages happening and sometimes not happening. I'd also see them being posted to the wrong sent folder once in a while.

My strange behaviors seemed to somehow correlate to which folder I was viewing at the time. It felt intermittent when it would work, so it was too hard to track down.

Good luck. 1 in every 100 messages, is really hard to pin down..

Mail isn't perfect? Perfect and mac Mail in the same sentence? If you Google this 'Sent" problem, it goes back to 2011. At one point around 2012, someone posted that they were assured by Apple that they were working on this problem. How difficult can it be to solve? I lost emails I really needed to not lose. I think Apple's programming for the simple things like mail is pathetic.

If anyone out ther can tell me how to recapture lost Mac emails, please reveal all.

I agree sbs78.

Thought all things mac were perfect when you listen to the "converted". Far from certain about that now....... Pfffft!

Same situation happened to me.

I have an IMAP account configured and all the messages are usually saved to Sent folder in IMAP server properly, but today one very important message were lost, I can`t find it.

I found messages below inside console application (not terminal) at the time I sent the message:

13/12/14 3:19:31.031 AM Mail[440]: Error Error Domain=MCMailErrorDomain Code=1030 "The IMAP command “CREATE” failed with server error: Mailbox exists.." UserInfo=0x6080006727c0 {NSLocalizedDescription=The IMAP command “CREATE” failed with server error: Mailbox exists..} occurred while trying to append messages to outgoing store. Ignoring and proceeding with delivery...

13/12/14 3:19:54.139 AM Mail[440]: Unable to get STATUS for INBOX.xxxxx@xxxx-xxx because CHECK failed with error: Error Domain=NSPOSIXErrorDomain Code=60 "The connection to the server “imap.mandic.com.br” on port 993 timed out." UserInfo=0x60000086fe40 {NSHelpAnchor=string:isp set up network send problem connection, NSLocalizedDescription=The connection to the server “imap.mandic.com.br” on port 993 timed out.}

I think its unacceptable that Apple didnt fixed this yet.

Unbelievable (and unacceptable) that this issue is still going on. I have just bought a second macbook running yosemite, so sync'd my yahoo.co.uk account to mail, not thinking for one minute that this would still be an issue and sure enough on only the fourth or fifth email I sent, the 'delayed send', eventually the swoosh sound, the message marked as replied to in the inbox view but NO SAVED ITEM.

What a terribly poor development team, I understand this may be due to a connection issue with the relevant servers when writing the sent message to the server but for the mail app to not save the message to try again or at least notify the user defies common sense.

The relevant management team at Apple should be ashamed, genuinely, not to mention they are in the wrong jobs. What a massive failure to go on for so long, and to be logged by so many people and not responded too. Shambolic.

My next steps;

1. Delete My Local Mail Account
2. Raise a Support Case
3. Work on a plan to start a premium laptop business that applies attention to detail across the board. Who's in? 😝

Happy New Year.

this is awesome. thanks

Agreed. This is totally unacceptable and it seems to indicate Apple is rushing too much when it comes to constantly putting out new operating systems. We do not need a new OS every year...we do not one that is reliable with Apps that work correctly. We need Apple to fix this problem because it is a huge functional issue for anyone who depends on email for important communication (which is like...uhh...everyone...)

If someone is having the issue of occasionally when sending an IMAP message that the message takes a very long time to send, the status bar in the lower lefthand corner is visible for a much longer of period of time than it should be, it only sends after a substantial time delay, and then one cannot find that Sent message anywhere on the computer, this is not an issue with the settings. It is not an issue with the email service provider. And it is not an issue with user error. This is a problem with OS X's Mail app, which Apple has been unable to or unwilling to address.

As of February 4, 2015, OS X still has this sporadic disappearing email problem (the 10.2 update does absolutely nothing to correct it.) I'm currently playing around with possible workarounds.

Ideally, Apple will fix this issue. And while I hope that I am wrong, due to the time this issue has persisted for, not to mention just how disruptive of an issue it can be, I do not have much confidence that Apple has the ability to fix this problem, and that is both disappointing and frustrating.

Hello,

I had the same problem that all of you. I tried Omni_steve solution but it only destroyed Mail and I had to rebuild the database, so back to the initial problem. I found a way around that problem : in Mail options, you can ask to automatically put yourself in Cci. I worked really well for me :-)

Thank you all for sharing your experience, this thread is really helpful.