MAC Mail not saving all sent items

Agreed, this is a scary scary bug. Negotiating a real estate transaction this morning only to find multiple emails didn't even go. They disappeared as soon as I hit send but no sign in any sent items in Mail or on Gmail on the web. Now I know why we have the slightly comical "whoosh" - you need it to know when this is a problem! I assumed my sound was muted and didn't even think twice not hearing it.

One thing I found that helped at least find them and send - I did a force kill on the Mail app then when it restarted, I suddenly had items in the "Outbox" and it proceeded to send them (including, slightly embarrasingly my multiple re-sends). Way to make me look like an email moron Apple!

R

Hi all,

It's incredible that Apple doesn't resolve this problem that exist for a very long time (search on IMAP, Apple mail sent). It's very easy to blame teh provider on their security settings, but I believe Apple is AGAIN trying to play the monopolist that knows it all better by building in some exotic protocol.

Really getting fed-up with their behaviour: last year I struggled for months because in Lion they buidl a new security protocol so that my Lacia NAS wasn't accessible for a long time (they wanted to push their Time Capsule); they ******-up teh wifi reconnection settings as well, so that you would buy their Airport or... Timecapsule.

What strike s is that teh mail on IOS Ipad and Iphone don't have any issue with IMAP at the same provider.

I switched to Thunderbird as a viable option.

My next computer will definately NOT be an Apple anymore.

Peter

I've noticed this problem intermittently over the last few months. At first, I thought I was imagining things.

Yesterday though, I wrote a long, thoughtfully crafted email about university business. I planned to re-send the message, edited to a second addressee. There's no record of the message. I'm not sure if it's been delivered.

I agree, this should have been sorted out. I like iCloud synchronisation, but I really miss the reliability of Thunderbird.

I have this issue on my iOS devices and I do not use iCloud for mail. My yahoo account seems to be the only one affected . I'm in the process of switching to gmail because I've had yahoo issues for over a year now and I'm sick of it. What is your mail provider. Just curious..

Hi, I'm using iCloud on my iMac. The message affected was sent from my @me.com address. I recently closed my gmail account (a previous job), and my yahoo account (too much spam). I can't recall whether the issue ever happened when using those accounts. Although I know it happened before.

This has to be a priority issue for Apple to resolve.

@Alex...this may sound like a silly question but is *.me its own provider? Can that be my only email address? I've never tried it before and I disparate need to get off yahoo because of its unreliability.

Yes I did

I just got rid of Icloud,deleted it from my Mac pro laptop and now all my emails are working as they where

before saving all my sent mail problem fixed

Hi,

@me.com is an email address from Apple's own MobileMe mail/internet service, which is now defunct. I kept my "@me.com" email address. Apple now offers "@icloud.com" addresses. If you own a Mac and have an Apple account, I think you should have an "@icloud.com" address, or you may indeed get one. Like Yahoo, it's free. There are paid options if you need more cloud storage space.

Tnx for the info. I wonder if you can have more than one like on yahoo or gmail.

I too have been struggling with the problem of Sent mail not appearing in the Sent folder, using Mail. I've also had intermittent problems when trying to Archive messages and moving emails from one folder to another.

As previously posted, it appears to be a problem / conflict between certain ISPs security protocols and Apple Mail having non-standard commands.

This doesn't seem to effect everybody, but it effects me, and has resulted in me "loosing" several sent messages (although the recipient has recieved them, I have no record of them, not even on the webmail interface). I've also had problems with attachments from incoming mail not being visible or just being corrupted (although I am not sure if this is related).

I've noticed the sent mail problem is made marginally better if:

- The mail message is of small size (ie there is no attachment)

- You switch off "store Drafts Server side" (ie store them locally) as this is constantly trying to save your message to an IMAP server and just makes the problem worse

- Using the Addon "MailHub" can improve things

Despite all of this i'm still occasionally loosing sent mails and having problems moving / archiving / deleting emails. The Apple Mail - IMAP interface just isn't reliable for me.

My email provider is via Yahoo, and I've noticed that many people who have this problem are using Yahoo and Apple Mail. In Yahoo's defence, they never claim to support IMAP for desktop systems, only portable IOS devices, so that leaves me with a choice of either changing my email provider or my email client.

Until this problem is resolved, I've opted to change my email client and am trying out "Postbox". It basically Thunderbird underneath but with an interface which is much more apple-mail like. Unfortunately this solution isn't free, but it will do for the moment. Postbox can be do alot of things apple mail can (after a bit of tweeking in the settings), has smart folders and a decent search. So far I haven't had a single hiccup, and it has proved 100% reliable, so will stick with it until this problem is resolved.

I have also been having this problem for months now. Sometimes my e-mails are stored in the sent folder. Sometimes they are not.

This is now becoming more serious than a mere inconvenience as many times I have no record at all of very important e-mails.

I am running a MacBook Pro on 10.6.8. I signed up for iCloud recently and also have an iPhone 4. Yet my communications systems are increasingly in tatters, thanks to Apple, as a bug in the iPhone 4 has muddled up (and multiplied) all my contact details. A nightmare.

I have been an Apple user and supporter for many years but things are starting to spiral out of control with their lack of effective customer service and bug fixing.

This serious problem has been known about for months and yet nothing is being done. Even Hotmail® is more reliable than Apple.

Anyone have any news as to what or when Apple will do to solve this absurd problem?

Having the same problems here.

Noticed that there was error alert next to my Sent folder, and it said that there was a timeout on the IMAP server. The port and server listed were for the Incoming Server.

My Outgoing server is smtp and a different port number.

Since the sent folder was indicating an error with the incoming server, does that indicate that the problem is in syncing or updating that incoming server with what's gone out?

Or, should the sent folder that is displayed be synced with outgoing server rather than the incoming server?

I know very little about IMAP, so sorry if I'm making totally incorrect or way-off-base assumptions.

I am having the same problem. First on my Imac starting a few months ago, using Mac Mail, where it seemed to be in particular messages containing attachments of any size (but not very big).

Now, it has appeared on my macbook, which I use much more for mail, and was always fine. It affects messages randomly, with or without attachements. It's extremely annoying and I have taken to copying myself into important messages.

Fortunately, sent messages (almost?) always show up in my Virginmedia mail window, so I tend to believe it is not their fault.

This seemed to start on macbook after a message appeared telling me I should rebuild mailbox and restart Mail, but I can't be certain of that. Any insight or solution is most welcome.

I'm not sure why we are in the dark ages not being able to send emails and see them in our sent folder. I've been getting surveys from apple and have mentioned this issue each time. Have you written apple? I think it's great we post here to perhaps get ideas, but we really should all be emailing them directly, flooding their mailbox. They obviously are not implementing things based upon what we say here.

I've just been forced into upgrading to an IMac after 11 years of hassle-free service from my nice, reliable eMac. At first all seemed well. Setting up my mail took a couple of clicks of the mouse and away we went. That said, I was slightly confused to see that my internet settings had been changed from those I'd been using on the eMac. It wasn't the greatest surprise then that I started having problems. Mail would take an age to download and send; sent mail wasn't showing up in the sent folder and the mail activity progress bar would show two or three messages being downloaded but only one or two would appear. Is it worth changing my accounts preferences back to what they were on my old Mac or could this do more harm than good?