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1 points

Lion Mail missing folders

After upgrading to Lion, Mail was missing some folders and some folders were missing messages. I tried Mailbox, Rebuild and it brought the messages in the folders that were there, but some folders were just not there. I recreated my Exchange account/mailbox and it was good for a day or so and then this morning, one of my highly used folders was gone and earlier today, a folder I have called "`Apple" of all things (the grave accent in front is to sort it near the top, but now that I think about it, the other folder that disappeared had a grave accent in front of it too - though this was never a problem with Mail before Lion) disappeared and I tried deleting the indexes and that didn't bring it back. I had to delete and create the account again.

It seems like there is a bug somewhere in Lion Mail. I may try removing the grave accents to see if that helps, but then what do you all use to keep some folders handy near the top? Exclamations or 1-, 2-, etc?

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Jul 25, 2011 10:53 PM

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boecherer Author

Level 1

1 points

Posted on Jul 27, 2011 7:57 PM

Yesterday I changed all the folders with grave accents to underscores. In Outlook for Windows I renamed 'Apple to _Apple and the other folders with grave accents the same way.

I deleted my Exchange account in Mac Mail and resynched. All the folders showed up. This evening I wanted to move something to a folder and all the folders with underscores in front of them (about 6) were gone.

The folders are there and work on my iOS devices but not on Mac Mail. Seems like a bug or an undocumented feature.

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305 replies

boecherer Author

Level 1

1 points

Aug 1, 2011 11:39 AM in response to rosner

Well, today after several days of working, I lost some of the top folders and then then some without the special character "_" in front of the folder names. So it's not special characters that's the problem, and I think we've determined that already. It even got to the point where after doing a Mailbox > Rebuild, NONE of my folders showed. I closed and opened a few times.

I finally tried the Keychain Certificates settings to OFF and that worked - everything was back when I relaunched Mail.

So it seems that for some people this works and for others it doesn't. Has anyone actually called Apple? Do we get free support with Lion since we purchased the software? If we have AppleCare then I know we get free support.

rosner

Level 1

21 points

Aug 1, 2011 3:58 PM in response to boecherer

Hi to all of you,

I "may" have some interesting news. I deleted the certificate from the keychain, deleted my exchange accounts, emtied cash and then re-installed my account. So far all the folder that didn't show, messages that didn't load, seems to be showing properly. So this may be the way to go. Seems to be some conflict between the "old" cetificate installed under Snow Leopard and Lion.

I will keep you all posted if it should be teh final "good" solution!

boecherer Author

Level 1

1 points

Aug 1, 2011 4:17 PM in response to rosner

@rosner Keep us posted.

After doing the Keychain fix, I had everything and then folders started disappearing again - I've lost 7 folders so far and my inbox shows 3 items (I WISH it were that empty!). So hopefully what you did works, but maybe just recreating the account is what worked for now and then after a while things will go away again.

When I have some time, I plan to call Apple. It would be nice if they just ACKNOWLEDGED there was a problem and that they are investigating. But right now we don't even know if they are aware of it so who knows when a fix or the right settings will be told to us.

I'm thinking that any change that requires a sync is what's temporarily fixing this. Deleting the accoutn and adding it requires a resync and the first time it syncs OK. Changing the cert info in keychain requires a sync of some sort and that refreshes things.

boecherer Author

Level 1

1 points

Aug 1, 2011 4:34 PM in response to boecherer

@rosner What is the name of the certificate in keychain. I'm willing to try it so I can get back folders and file stuff.

rosner

Level 1

21 points

Aug 1, 2011 10:48 PM in response to boecherer

Over 12 hours later here and it still works.....

Simply type "exchange" in the search field and you should find your certificate. I forgot to say one thing: I also went to home> library> mail and cut/pasted everything inside the V2 folder out into a V2 folder I created on the desktop. Then I made sure that all accounts were deleted from within Mail and within preferences. If you don't do this, he will first revert to the V2 folder for re-building your mailboxes.

VERY IMPORTANT: Best is setting up your account after restart from Apple > System preferences. Once you have set up your account, make sure to quickly switch off your Wifi/Internet and launch Mail, go to Mail > Preferences > Mailbox Behaviors and choose for "Never" at the bottom if you don't want your Mail app to remove all e-mails older than 1 month from the server. By default Apple has configured one month (and this default behavior can't be changed it seems). I once lost all my trashed e-mails because I didn't know that this option was configured this way. So once again: After configuring your account, straightaway switch off any connection to the net and change this setting (if needed of course).

Good luck and I'll keep you posted if I have more good (or bad) news!

Aug 2, 2011 8:14 AM in response to boecherer

Hello All,

I am watching this treat for a few days now and it looks like big NO GO for now.

I even installed Lion from DMG file and still experiencing the same problems.

I wonder if someone contacted Apple on this really annoing issue.

Thanks,

Michael Abadjiev

rosner

Level 1

21 points

Aug 2, 2011 8:30 AM in response to mabadjiev

FYI: Still have no problems since I proceeded as explained in earlier thread!!

boecherer Author

Level 1

1 points

Aug 2, 2011 8:40 AM in response to rosner

@rosner That's good news. I was trouble free for about 2 days so hopefully it's working for you.

Last night a few folders were missing for me. Then by this morning, all that was left was the top level folder. I hit Mailbox, Rebuild and then ALL of the folders were back. So it seems like the folders start dropping like flies a few at a time and then after they are all forgotten, they come back again. Very strange.

Keep us posted rosen. btw, you say to delete all email accounts. SO if I have gmail and Exchange, etc I have to get rid of EVERYTHING, not just the errant Exchange account?

rosner

Level 1

21 points

Aug 2, 2011 8:55 AM in response to boecherer

Sorry, I meant all Exchange accounts, not GMail etc....

Aug 2, 2011 11:11 AM in response to boecherer

So what is the procedure that you use, here there are so many things. Could you please briefly describe it.

Thanks,

Aug 2, 2011 11:22 AM in response to boecherer

Well I'm not convinced these solutions are long term fixes. Though, I am not able to delete my root ssl certificate for my exchange accounts. I have done everything listed on all these forums, and still come back to my inbox with missing folders and messages. Extremely frustrating from a small business standpoint to have to close Mail or delete account and redo. Love the new interface, but definitely some bugs to work out. Plus my Chrome browser, Mail.app, and other softwares crash quite a bit since installing. I guess I can do a full install instead of an update...but it's just a lot of work and time.

rosner

Level 1

21 points

Aug 3, 2011 12:21 AM in response to LogicalLowdown

I am still not experiencing any problems...so far so good....has been 48 hours now (nearly).

@mabadjiev : Simply follow my instructions a bit further up on this page.

rosner

Level 1

21 points

Aug 3, 2011 8:42 AM in response to rosner

Bad news: I just lost one of my folders again. So that confirms one thing: Apple needs to quickly get to now about this issue and make an update. This is REALLY frustrating as I have to log into my OWA in order to read my mails stored in that folder! Makes me crazy...

I will try to get in touch with Apple, but you guys should also drop them a line or two!!

boecherer Author

Level 1

1 points

Aug 3, 2011 8:49 AM in response to rosner

Bummer. I had a feeling it would happen, but I didn't want to jinx you. I was about to do all your changes today. I resort to my iPad to move items to folders, but that shouldn't have to be.

I'll call Apple soon. Just busy the next few days.

Aug 3, 2011 10:38 AM in response to boecherer

@rosner Dang, was hoping you figured it out.

I gave up. Switched back to Outook 2011. Can't waste time losing folders and quitting the app every 5 minutes. Come Apple, I want to use your product for business. This is a big deal to you guys, I have read about it everywhere. So make your product work nicely with Exchange.

Lion Mail missing folders