Missing emails in Mail - Lion deleting them?

I am having a very similar problem. For a while I've noticed that emails I've sent don't always appear in my sent items box - seemingly vanishing into the ether. I've also had the problem whereby Mail.app kept wanting to redownload all of my emails each time I clicked on a folder. Since I have some 20-30,000 emails, this became a real pain and meant that the search function that I use all the time is useless.

I've now discovered the deleting problem for my other folders though. I had to reference an email for an important phone call I need to make tomorrow. The email had the time I needed to call and the phone number I needed to ring. I checked the folder on my phone and the message wasn't to be seen. Checked my computer and it wasn't there. Checked webmail (Yahoo Mail) and it wasn't there either. Luckily, I use Time Machine so I was able to recover the mail. Not only that but it appears that mail.app deleted a week's worth of messages from this folder - all with important details in.

Apple has to acknowledge this bug and fix it quickly, if it wasn't for Time Machine, this would have cost me dearly. Heaven knows how many other emails I've lost without noticing.

So, I assume many people have experienced the same problem. And it is a bug to be fixed for sure.

Do you know anything about a reliable version of Mail/Lion being released soon? Or better said; is Apple aware of this problem? Do they do anything? Will we be able to use Mail on Lion again, or forget it for ever?

I'm having a similar problem, I think. Emails that I've noticed accessing my gmail account via the web or on my iphone don't show up in Lion Mail. But when I search by name of sender they pop up. This is terrible! I depend on email and I seem sure to miss some this way.

Well closing and reopening Mail seems to resolve this, at least for now. I was missing last two days email in Mail but this action has brought me up to date.

Same problem for me. Oddly enough, I have two MacBook Pro's running Lion. Each has the same email accounts configured in Mail. (3 accounts, including iCloud, Gmail, and Exchange)

One computer does not have this problem. One computer does.

I had to create a Smart Folder that showed emails in the Inbox just to see emails in the Inbox!

I have just come across this issue as well, and have lost many items of pertinent information. All IMAP accounts have been affected. Apple, please do something!!!

Ditto. I've actually been in the middle of reading an email and had the email disappear right in front of my eyes! Quiting and restarting mail brought it back. Unreal.

I'm having the same problems. Mail will show up on one computer or iPhone and disappear on another. I went to the Apple store and they gave me a blank stare. Glad to see I'm not the only one going nuts. Hope they fix this soon.

Same problem.... adding one more voice to the choir. ⚠

I have just noticed that I and another person were emailed by a colleague. The other person replied copying me into the reply. The original email shows in iCloud viewed through in browser, but does not show in Mail (Lion) but on opening the other person's reply there is the missing email shown a No 1 in a 2 mail conversation. On closer observation the other peron's reply has a 2 against it with triangle, clicking on triangle revealed the missing email in the list. Un-ticking "View by Converstion" in the View menu removed this linkage and "exposed" the original email as a separate entry. This does not explain all missing emails but resolves one confusion for me.

I have just encountered the same situation.

My iphone and ipad stopped receiving emails yesterday and i found it fishy. i came home after work today and checked my mac mail. it also did not receive any emails. but i had managed to successfully sent out an email just yesterday and was expecting a reply.

i went to yahoo web server to log in to check and there are new mails there including the reply i was expecting.

i tried to delete and reinstall the mail on the mac, ipad n iphone. it didnt work

i tried the method mentioned earlier in the thread about bringing a file out the desktop but that file couldnt be found in the mail.

any kind soul please advise.

thanks!

This can hardly be the same situation. If not receiving on your iPhone, iPad nor Mac, but messages are on the server, then not a Lion nor Mail issue. More likely your particular provider of this Yahoo account has changed the server name in some manner, or a similar change you will now have to make to the setup on each device.

Ernie

It happened again.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3206902?answerId=16415023022#16415023022

After the message above, I gave up with Lion and switched back to Snow Leopard hoping not to experience something similar again. But:

This time, I was looking for a message in some folder. I found it, there were three other messages (four messages in total) in the same folder.

I wrote a message, wanted to check the same folder again, and when I opened it, there were only two messages. Two were gone. Simply gone.

I checked the trash, they weren't there. I checked the yahoo mail webpage, they weren't listed there, either.

Then I remembered that I had the same messages on my iPhone. But, this time I was smart enough to turn off wifi access on my iPhone and looked for the same folder. Guess what, there were all the four messages, because the folder was not synchronised with the server, yet.

But, as soon as I turn on wifi again (which I have to do sometime anyway), the messages will be deleted again. Because, Mail and/or Lion not only delete the messages from the computer, but also from the server, which makes it impossible to retrieve it/them again.

I don't know, whether Apple people are looking at these fora but, this is a very very serious problem. At least for me.

I depend on my computer for business, and I wish I haven't invested twice the amount of money to mac very recently (three months ago) and kept using ..., you know. I'm really ****** off and my next computer will not be a mac definitely.

Is there any way to escalate this problem with Apple?

This is such a serious issue for business users that I cannot believe the press has not picked up on this. I have lost very important mails this way, containing elements of contracts. I do not even dare to bring up that my Mac is losing these mails to the Windows users in my company.

Where is Apple in all of this?

I cannot find any relevant info on the net if how and when this will be fixed.

I have about 15 accounts active at any one time, and roughly half of them are IMAP. IMAP are acessed on two iPhones and an iPad -- this never happens in my network.

What type accounts are you using -- IMAP or Exchange? On every computer or device are they defined as the same account type?

If this is an Apple problem, which I doubt, it is very isolated and will require lots more set up info.

Ernie