Q: Email in Mavericks Apple Mail is blank and/or missing.

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Email in Mavericks Apple Mail is blank and/or missing.

Has anyone figured out how to fix this problem?  I am having the same blank email problem after downloading Maverick 10.9.2 and mail 7.2.  Saved emails are blank except for date.  It is maddening.

What worked for me: If in Mail go to File 'Import Mailboxes'. It opens a dialog to find the mailboxes to import. I went to my current V2 mail folder, clicked 'Continue'. It opened a tiny dialog box practically listing all your mail by mailbox titles. I hit the column header to uncheck all (I only wanted one mailbox for now) then scrolled down to the mailbox with the blank email and started checking all the boxes for that mailbox. Then hit 'Import' and Wallah all the mail came in to a Mailbox folder called 'Import'. Messages were no longer blank.

Still wary of Mail but it worked.

I had this problem when I bought a new Mac and transferred all my E mail from PC.  There are many many threads on the various Apple Forums on the net about this issue.  Nothing I tried worked. One might think that Apple would issue a fix given the volume o fpeople who have this problem.

In the end I had to ring Apple Support and they deleted the E mail and started again and so far, no repeat of the problem. I am embarassed to say, I dont really understand wha tthe guy did! I have lost about 2 months of  mail, but I hesitate to up load it from my back up incase it all disappears again.

Here’s what I did and it worked:

Quit Mail if it’s open.

Go to your home Library folder; it’s hidden. To show the Library folder, hold down the Option key, then in the Finder choose Go > Library.

In ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData, delete any file that begins with “Envelope Index,” such as Envelope Index or Envelope Index-shm.

Re-open Mail.

Mail creates new Envelope Index files. This process may take a few minutes, depending on how many messages Mail is reindexing.

Then select the empty Mail Box that may be empty and then click Mailbox>Rebuild.

(I did this last step and it didn’t bring back the content, so I did the following):

Go back into the Library folder and in the Mailboxes folder, look for the ___.mbox file and the new _____-2.mbox file that was made in this process…you can move the smaller folder out of the Mailboxes folder and onto your desktop.

Delete the “-2” from the .mbox folder name that remains in the Mailboxes folder, then close Mail (if open) and reopen Mail. You should then see your missing email content restored when you go back to the folders that had the problems.

It worked entirely for me...but what a pain!

AN EMBARRASINGLY SIMPLE SOLUTION.... for me, I just had to move down the grey menu panel on the left and the folders were listed, i.e. they weren't in the inbox, and the layout of the panel on the left meant they were just hidden from view. They can be 'picked-up' and move towards the top of the list so are visible then without scrolling.

I have a permutation on this problem that I've not seen anyone mention. On my wife's 2011 iMac, running Mavericks, yesterday her Mail client shows incoming Mail, and all of the headers to the e-mails (Inbox, folders, etc. — everything) is there; but no content. Until one hits "reply" or "reply all"; then the content of the messages shows up, below the reply that one creates. I've tried everything suggested on this thread, including LAB1029s suggestion; and nothing changes the situation. Truly weird. Any notions on what's going on? Reboots, rebuilds, etc.—nothing changes things. Suggestions?

Hello,

I followed your directions to restore contents of blank folders.  After the entire mailbox folder was replace I went back to Library folder and in Mailboxes folder moved the .mbox file to my desktop, then deleted the -2 from my folder name., closed mail and reopened Mail.  When I went to reopen my mail, I found the folders with even less information--blank.  I have gone back to my Library/Mail/V2/MailData and notice the following:

Also under Mailboxes I notice:

no index appears to be a problem...?

Help---I don't know how to proceed but if I click on all the files in the Health.mbox they are still there.

I tried to restore using my Time Machine and now have an Mail(original) and  Mail.  Both mirror each other.

Im hoping someone can help.  Thanks,S

THIS WORKED FOR ME !

LAB1029

Here’s what I did and it worked:

Quit Mail if it’s open.

Go to your home Library folder; it’s hidden. To show the Library folder, hold down the Option key, then in the Finder choose Go > Library.

In ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData, delete any file that begins with “Envelope Index,” such as Envelope Index or Envelope Index-shm.

Re-open Mail.

Mail creates new Envelope Index files. This process may take a few minutes, depending on how many messages Mail is reindexing.

Then select the empty Mail Box that may be empty and then click Mailbox>Rebuild.

(I did this last step and it didn’t bring back the content, so I did the following):

Go back into the Library folder and in the Mailboxes folder, look for the ___.mbox file and the new _____-2.mbox file that was made in this process…you can move the smaller folder out of the Mailboxes folder and onto your desktop.

Delete the “-2” from the .mbox folder name that remains in the Mailboxes folder, then close Mail (if open) and reopen Mail. You should then see your missing email content restored when you go back to the folders that had the problems.

It worked!

When I tried doing this, it starts importing messages out of 68363. It gets to about 1406 and then it fails.

What other way can I do this?

I got hit with the blank email problem and finally tracked down what seems to be the cause of the blank and missing emails. They were all in two separate email accounts that were linked to the same user name and web site. One was to an email account I had on the site, the other to my personal domain hosted by the same company. Both are POP accounts. Snow Leopard (10.6) Mail had no problem with that, but in Mavericks Mail the emails in both accounts either disappeared entirely, or were blank when opened. When I opened either account in preferences to edit, Mavericks mail would say there was an error, which clued me in to the fact that it couldn't tell the two apart. As far as I can tell, that was the problem. When I deactivated one account this morning, all the email reappeared, and it's been stable now for most of the day. Two other POP accounts, one at gmail and one at Verizon, were not affected and have been stable.

If you're seeing this problem, you should check if you have the same situation, or if you might have some set-up that somehow confused Mavericks Mail so it doesn't know where the mail belongs.

Lab1029 - thank you very much. 

Deleting those Envelope Index files fixed my empty mailboxes problem  Thx, Ted

I ran into this odd problem some months after installing Yosemite and after after changing the settings / passwords in incoming and outgoing servers... or something.  Happy to report deleting those files worked great for me.  Nice fix -  basically reloaded all emails in all accounts.  Did not need the last two steps. Thanks LAB1029!

I just spent 10 minutes with Apple support and rebooted my Mac Book in safe mode and everything reset itself and is working perfectly.  Sometimes settings get corrupted and they are reset when booting in safe mode.  To do safe mode, hold the shift key down right after turning the power on and you will see your messages right away.

Then restart in normal mode and you are good to go.  Hope this helps.