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Mac Mail deleting IMAP emails after 2 weeks?

I have three godaddy webmail accounts. All are setup as IMAP accounts.

I have an imac running 10.6, an ipad2 fully updated and an iphone 4 fully updated.

Mac Mail on one of these devices (I am guessing it's the imac) is deleting all messages (in inbox, sent, deleted, all boxes) after 2 weeks! This is very very very frustrating and it is going to destroy my business as I am trying to find emails from our manufacturer in China and can't go back past 2 weeks!

Godaddy claims one of our devices is deleting the emails. They are even disappearing from the server, so if I login to the webmail online, they are even gone from there! This is not good and I have done dozens of searches for help and cannot get a clear answer as to what is happening.

This happened a month ago and I was able to have godaddy recover all the lost emails and reload them. The other day they were all still in my inbox and then this morning they were all gone after 2 weeks ago!

If anyone can help please offer some advice, thanks!

Doug

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on May 19, 2012 7:57 AM

41 replies

Jun 25, 2012 12:43 PM in response to dougseamansjr

Doug,

Could you try changing your email password and reporting back if that makes a difference? The reason I suggest this is that, usually, when we see a customer experiencing mysterious deletion of mail, it's the result of having a POP mail client running somewhere that they've forgotten about. Changing the email password (through your Go Daddy account or within the Web-based Email client) will force you to also change the password to match on all the devices/clients that you use - any that you may have forgotten about will no longer be able to access the box and delete things.

Alon

Jun 25, 2012 1:34 PM in response to GoDaddyGuy

I changed my password on the hosted account and then I updated it on my Imac, Iphone and Ipad. I will update the Powerbook when I get hoe and see if this changes anything...

Jun 25, 2012 3:26 PM in response to dougseamansjr

Can you also confirm that the Powerbook is set to IMAP just like the other devices?

Jul 5, 2012 4:00 AM in response to GoDaddyGuy

The Powerbook at home is set to IMAP.

This is literally ruinning my business. I have old emails from a supplier in China that I cannot pull up. I have projects for clients that are now gone and I have to embarassingly email them to ask if they can re-send me the project. Everything disappears after 7-8 days. This is NOT a problem with any of my devices, there are NO settings on any of my devices that even give the option to delete emails after 7 days. I really don't know what to do from here but this needs to be fixed.

Thanks for the help.

Jul 5, 2012 4:10 AM in response to GoDaddyGuy

And, I have two accounts loaded on macmail, both are loaded onto all 4 devices and both are godaddy hosted and only one of them is deleting old emails, not both of them. They are both setup the same exact way so this cannot be an issue on my end.

Jul 5, 2012 4:17 AM in response to GoDaddyGuy

Also, on the Powerbook at home, I have ALL my emails, going back months, over 2,000 emails. On my iphone, imac and ipad, and even when logged into the online webmail, I only have 37 emails.

What could possibly be causing this?!

Jul 5, 2012 4:34 AM in response to GoDaddyGuy

I'm not the only one...

http://support.godaddy.com/groups/email/forum/topic/no-emails-on-my-server-older -then-1-week/

Jul 5, 2012 2:29 PM in response to dougseamansjr

Doug,

I asked one of our Email Systems engineers to investigate this, and he was unable to find anything on our end that was deleting your mail. Our best guess is that one of the many clients you have accessing the email account is either not setup properly or is not working as it's been instructed (ie, it has a setting that's applied in one way but is acting in another). To troubleshoot this, my remaining recommendation is that you disconnect all clients and slowly re-introduce them, giving each scenario enough time to determine that there is no problem before adding the new client.

The best way to disconnect all clients is to reset the email password (from the Go Daddy Email Control Center or from the Web-based Email interface), as I suggested in an earlier response. This will guarantee no other client can connect until you change the password on that device. When you do reintroduce new devices, I also recommend not just changing the password - instead, it's best to fully remove the email account and add it back again.

I apologize that I have to recommend an effort that's such a hassle, but it's a last resort after investigation found absolutely nothing on our end to suggest an error server side. I really hope this yields results for you. Please let me know.

Alon

Jul 6, 2012 5:31 AM in response to GoDaddyGuy

It is definitely a mac mail problem! We have one more address on our godaddy account, it had about 200 messages in it, I added it to the mac mail on the imac (it is my wife's email address and was already on our old powerbook at home and on her iphone), it started to download all 200 messages and once it finished it deleted all messages older than 7 days, cutting the total down to 63 in the blink of eye.

So, Mac support, help out! Mac Mail on 10.6.8 is deleting messages older than 7 days! What gives?!

Jul 6, 2012 4:30 PM in response to dougseamansjr

Doug,

I'm sorry to hear the problem persists, but I'm definitely happy to know that we can agree it isn't a problem on Go Daddy's side. Please be sure to post any solution you come across for the benefit of others, and good luck to you.

Alon

Aug 10, 2012 4:55 PM in response to GoDaddyGuy

Was this problem addressed by Apple? Is there any resolution available?

Aug 13, 2012 11:28 AM in response to dougseamansjr

Hey Doug,

I'm definitely having the same problem you are, and have found a temporary solution. I use Mac Mail on OSX 10.7.3, with a spamarrest.com email server.

My workaround solution: I moved to POP mail instead of IMAP. To check this solution I kept the IMAP for a couple weeks, and each Monday emails more than 2 weeks old continued to disappear. However, my POP mail seems to be retaining the old emails just fine. Only problem is that I'm missing 3-4 weeks of emails, when IMAP was deleting things without me realizing. POP was unable to recover these.

With POP mail, there is an option to delete emails from the server after a certain period. Probably better to select "never".

Try adding POP mail - it can't hurt! I also went into my old Mac machine and double checked that I had not previously asked Mac Mail to delete emails from the server after a period of time.

I hope someone from Apple finds a resolution, because this doesn't seem like an intended consequence of using IMAP. My Gmail IMAP does not have these issues.

Sep 6, 2012 1:24 PM in response to dougseamansjr

The same happened to me on 3 e-mail addreses!

This shouldn't be default option! I went to Main -> Preferences -> The e-mail -> Advanced, and there is an option to remove copy of the messeges from the inbox after 3 weeks, and on default it is set to delete them. This is rediculous. I hope Apple adress this!

Evgeni Atanasov

pvdl10

Level 1

13 points

Sep 19, 2012 8:56 PM in response to Ev.Atanasov

I don't agree AT ALL that we have eliminated godaddy as the cause of the mail deletion problem.

I have the same problem - imap account, mailserver at godaddy, MACOS mail client on MACOS 10.7.4.

I just started using Thunderbird as the email client. Let's see if that makes a difference.

Peter

Oct 1, 2012 6:39 AM in response to dougseamansjr

Hi!

Anyone else still experience this? Could it be a specific Mail.app version thats causing this?

I work for a IT-company and we have seen multiple Mail.app users with imap which suddently lost all their mail in inbox only after a certain date. This is with different imap servers and the only thing that is in common with the users is that they are using IMAP and Mail.app

Mac Mail deleting IMAP emails after 2 weeks?