mail missing from inbox

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mail missing from inbox

I am helping a friend who is not real savvy, she is on a 2.33 intel core 2 duo Macbook pro, running 10.5.8, her Apple mail app is 3.6. There is one user account on the Mac, and one Mail account set up as POP. She said yesterday after sending an email all the mail in her inbox disappeared. She is getting new mail and can send. She said she had about 2000 emails in the inbox. I looked at her user/library/mail folder and there are two major folders there. One is a folder with her correct account name (pop her name) and is 5 gig in size, has deleted,drafts, inbox, sent. The second is called Mailboxes and is 46mb, and has deleted, delivered, drafts, outbox. Both show exactly the same modified time 14.23 today. First thing I am doing is backing up the user/library/mail folder now and Googling for answers, any suggestions are appreciated.

Posted on Mar 7, 2012 11:49 AM

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Answer 1

vudutu Author

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Mar 7, 2012 12:48 PM in response to vudutu

OK, after BU I ran the mail rebuild but that only brought back 300 or so, interesting thing is I can look in the user/library/mail folder/her account/inbox/messages and there are 7K messages and there are 1.5 gigs in there. I am deleting the rebuilt mail and coping back from the BU.

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Answer 2

BDAqua

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239,111 points

Mar 7, 2012 4:10 PM in response to vudutu

Not certain, but this can fix myriad Mail problems...

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), it will try to repair your Disk Directory while the spinning radian is happening, so let it go, run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move this folder & file to the Desktop.

Move this Folder to the Desktop...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/

Move this file to the Desktop...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index

Reboot.

If that doesn't do it and you can afford to redo all your Rules, try these & reboot...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist.backup

Note, in 10.5 & up /Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/ may or may not exist.

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Answer 3

vudutu Author

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Mar 8, 2012 6:23 AM in response to BDAqua

BDA, U rock, it brought back 3200 emails. Permissiond rebuild did not find any issues with mail but the first two file/folder moves did work. I still don't quiet get the difference between the relationship between the mail folder with her correct account name (pop her name) which has in it deleted,drafts, inbox, sent and the second called Mailboxes which contains deleted, delivered, drafts, outbox. I am sure she has no rules set, I may do the rules moves and make her clean out or organize her inbox messages.

Thanks again

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Answer 4

BDAqua

Level 10

239,111 points

Mar 8, 2012 9:15 AM in response to vudutu

Great news, thanks! 🙂

The Safe Boot & Permission fix is sort if like looking both ways before crossing the street... not always needed to prevent loss, but if needed you can't go back & do it over. 😉

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Answer 5

vudutu Author

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Mar 8, 2012 1:25 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks again, understand, can you expound any on the difference between or relationship between the mail folder with her correct account name (pop her name) which has in it deleted,drafts, inbox, sent and the second called Mailboxes which contains deleted, delivered, drafts, outbox. Why deleted and drafts are in both, outbox in one and delivered, is that not sent or is that confirmed open?

Thanks

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Answer 6

BDAqua

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239,111 points

Mar 8, 2012 2:45 PM in response to vudutu

Somebody, or syncing to some device added those other ones, like Delivered, or possibly from an old Account that had some?

In Mail's Menu>Mailbox...>New Mailbox... click on that & you'll see choices of where to put the new one.

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Answer 7

Mar 8, 2012 4:42 PM in response to vudutu

Try rebuilding the inbox. Quit and reopen Mail then select the Inbox, and choose Mailbox > Rebuild.

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Answer 8

kegger

Level 1

9 points

Jul 29, 2012 8:06 PM in response to vudutu

BDAqua... I have this same concern, but I've just updated to Mountain Lion.... since the upgrade, my mail program has been very erratic... I've fixed most irregularities, but my "sent" mailbox is gone... I have 4 different accts in mail and have only used my main one for sending mail.

I tried your suggestion but user/library/caches... there is no "mail" folder; and in user/library/mail... there is no "Envelope Index". Any suggestions?

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Answer 9

Aug 6, 2012 3:38 PM in response to BDAqua

Question...do you move the mail folder and envelope index file back into library after the reboot or import them into mail? I did the repair permissions and drives, moved the folder and file, but when I clicked on mail I was going to have to set it up all over again and I have 100s of thousands of emails. My issue is that my emails in inbox keep disappearing and only notes show up. They randomly come back. Sometimes rebuild works, most times it does not. So frustrating!

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Answer 10

Aug 6, 2012 7:12 PM in response to kegger

Kegger- I found my Mail folder under cache after all of the com.apple folders (it's WAY down). The envelope index file was under library/mail/mailbox data. Hope that helps!

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