Inbox messages 30 days & older being automatically deleted

Question

Inbox messages 30 days & older being automatically deleted

Mail is automatically deleting messages from my Inbox automatically when they reach an age of about 30 days, any ideas? I've got a workaround in place right now, rule that forwards messages to a yahoo account once they reach 27 days, but I'd like to be able to just leave them on my machine for those times I need to reference an email and the internet isn't available.

AFAIK there is NOT an option/preference for automatically deleting Inbox messages, that was my first thought but when I dug around I couldn't find it anywhere. Am I missing something obvious?

If the solution is to backup my messages, trash mail, and reinstall thats fine but I'd like some pointers on how to do so. I've never backed up Mail emails so any tips would help 😉

Thanks!

Mail 2.0.7, OS X 10.4.5, 17" 1.5Ghz Powerbook

1.5Ghz 17 PowerBook G4 w/ 1Gb Ram, Mac OS X (10.4.5), 1Ghz titanium Powerbook G4 w/ 1Gb Ram , 5G 60Gb black iPod, 3G 10Gb iPod

Posted on Mar 29, 2006 9:08 AM

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Answer 1

Mar 29, 2006 11:21 AM in response to Chris Watson_

Hello Chris.

For what account type - .Mac, IMAP or POP?

This sounds like it may be an AOL account or an IMAP type account.

All IMAP account mailboxes stored on the server in Mail and with any email client are synchronize with the server. Any messages removed from your account's Inbox mailbox in Mail is caused by an available setting on the server or by the email account provider.

AOL does this.

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Answer 2

Mar 29, 2006 12:19 PM in response to Chris Watson_

Does it delete them if they are in a different mailbox? Has it always done it? What sort of mail account have you?

AK

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Answer 3

Apr 1, 2006 5:25 PM in response to Allan Sampson

I knew I forgot something in my post 😉 It's occuring in both of my pop accounts (ISP and personal website). As far as I know its always done it, although I do have three messages (the first three I recieved) that have not been deleted.

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Answer 4

Apr 2, 2006 5:33 AM in response to Chris Watson_

Hi,

would be interesting to trace this thread because I have a similar (if not the same) problem.

I used to use IMAP as account type for my main email account but I noticed, too, spontaneously disappearing mails.
I checked directly on the mail server and they are still there. But in Mail (version 2.0.7 (746.2/746.3) from OS X 10.4.5) I couldn't find these mails anywhere. Not in the Inbox, nor in Spam, Trash or any other local or remote folder. And there is no rule that would have affected these mails.

Meanwhile I switched to using POP3 with that email account and got the missing messages back (visible in Mail's Inbox). But I'd really like to find and solve the problem and use IMAP again.

As far as the 30 days are concerned the original poster mentioned I can't confirm this. Sometimes I think yes, there's a certain amount of time after which the mails disappear but then again it seems to be different all the time. Sometime a mail disappeared after just one day (it's still on the mail server) in Mail and sometimes mails disappeared after app. two months.

Is there any known issue? I have a lot of rules for mailing lists that just move mails into a folder -- but the missing mails can't be found in this folder, neither.

What would be necessary to reinstall Mail from scratch? Will I loose all my mails then?

Thanks in advance & greetings from Germany,
Stefan.

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Answer 5

Apr 2, 2006 5:31 PM in response to Chris Watson_

I don't know what causes your problem, but there's a much better work around for it than what you're doing now. Create custom mailbox folders and put there all the mail that you want to keep, organized however you like. Note that this would be a good idea even if Mail wasn't deleting any messages by itself. Inbox should be used just as a temporary location for storing incoming messages, until you move them to a more appropriate place.

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