Mail/AOL Mail Saved Message Nightmare

The problem is that the messages have disappeared from the server, or is it just that Mail doesn't show them?

If they have vanished completely and they don't show up anywhere, what may have happened is that your boss moved the messages to the wrong mailbox by mistake. With a "normal" IMAP server that wouldn't be a huge problem, but AOL is a nightmare in this respect, as it only lets the mail client to manage certain folders. It doesn't let the mail client to move messages into Sent Items, for example. I don't know what would happen if the user tries to manually move a message into this mailbox, but I wouldn't be surprised if the message simply disappears as a result...

The mailbox named "Saved" that appears in Mail.app should be the local representation of the same-named mailbox folder on AOL's servers, & dragging emails into it should upload them to the server. They should not disappear. Whenever Mail.app syncs with AOL, all messages in the server folder should also appear in the local representation.

You can check this independently of Mail.app by going to the web mail view of the AOL mailboxes with a browser. Note that the Mac OS X AOL client app "AOL," currently at version 10.3.6, does not give you any access to the "Saved" mailbox, only to three mailboxes called "New Mail" (unread incoming email), "Old Mail" (read incoming email), & "Sent Mail" (recently sent email). Mail.app shows messages from the first two of these in the "AOL IMAP" inbox & the last in "Sent Items." AOL deletes messages in the second two of these server mailboxes after a few days; it deletes unread email after approximately 4 weeks. Mail should reflect this whenever it syncs with AOL's servers. (In the web mail interface, you can set a preference to show "New Mail" & "Old Mail" as two mailboxes or as one "Inbox" but this applies only to the web mail interface.)

If he accidentally tried to move the messages to another AOL server-side mailbox with Mail.app, such as "Sent Items," he should have received an error saying the message could not be moved, since this is not allowed by AOL, & the messages should remain in the original location. If that location is one of the mailboxes AOL purges, the messages will be lost when removed from the server.

R C-R,

If he accidentally tried to move the messages to another
AOL server-side mailbox with Mail.app, such as "Sent
Items," he should have received an error saying the
message could not be moved, since this is not allowed by
AOL, & the messages should remain in the original location.

Have you actually tried this? I have no way of trying it myself, and your post doesn't make it clear whether that's just what you'd expect to happen or whether you have actually tried it -- I wouldn't be surprised one way or another, but I would like to avoid speculating about it myself if another user experiments a similar situation in the future.

Thanks in advance for the clarification.

Have you actually tried this?

Yes.

Odd. When I tried this this morning with my AOL account in Mail, messages that I used to be able to save to the server's "Saved" mailbox with no problem then generated an error message in Mail as follows:

The message <name ofmessage> could not be moved to the mailbox "Saved - AOL IMAP"

(This is the same behavior I used to get only with any of the mailboxes AOL does not allow the client to add messages to.)

However, unlike in your experience, the message did remain in whatever mailbox I tried to drag them from (they did not disappear) & Mail's error message (which is actually a drop down "sheet" & not a popup window) remained attached to Mail's Viewer Window until I dismissed it with its "OK" button.

Weirder still, five minutes later, I tried this with another locally stored message & this time it was moved to the the AOL "Saved" mailbox (no window or sheet appeared), but as soon as I opened that mailbox's view in Mail, the message (which did appear there before syncing with AOL) disappeared from that mailbox without a trace once the sync completed!

My guess is AOL is retooling its email service in some way as part of the move to offering free email accounts ... & it isn't going too well. 😟

Follow up info:

FWIW I can still (so far, anyway) use the web mail interface to move any messages into the "Saved" folder without any permanence problems, so it does not appear that AOL has removed the feature from the service itself, only that the IMAP interface has become unreliable, at least with Mail.

It would be interesting to know if anyone using a different email client like Thunderbird is seeing the equivalent behavior. (Since AOL email accounts are now free*, anyone familiar with Thunderbird can try this without risking anything except some un-backed up email ...)

* The free offer is intended for the USA but an AOL spokesperson said anyone can take advantage of it as long as they can use the US, English language AOL site for sign up. What is particularly interesting about this is there apparently are no limits (quotas) on "Saved" mail storage ... & even if there were, I can see no reason why you can't just keep adding new free accounts. This means, in effect AOL is offering unlimited remote storage to the world! (Yes, you can attach files to e-mails & store them in "Saved" -- at least with the web interface -- so you could back up just about anything this way!)

So ... I'm thinking this won't last ... unless AOL ad revenues are a lot greater than I think they are....

Assorted tidbits that may or may not be of use to those following this thread:

1. As of August 5, I was still able to save whatever emails I wanted to select from any Mail mailbox to the AOL "Saved" mailbox with no errors or disappearance problems of any kind whatsoever.

2. As of approximately one month ago, I could with Mail.app also move any email I wanted from the AOL IMAP inbox to the AOL "Spam" mailbox. This is what some official AOL help documents indicate is the equivalent to using the AOL client app "Report Spam" button, so I assume this is, or at least was previously, officially supported with IMAP access to AOL email as the approved way to report spam when not using AOL client or web mail access.

2.a. At some point in the last ten days or so, I noticed this 'report spam' equivalent was not working properly with Mail.app. I don't know the exact date this started happening since I don't often have to use the feature, but what I do know is that as of ~ July 28, I started getting error messages similar to the ones we now see for moving messages to "Saved." So far, the error messages are all that happens with this -- IOW, there is no disappearance problem, only a refusal to accept any email into the "Spam" server folder via Mail.app.

3. In Mail.app, using the menu "Copy to..." option for attempts to move messages into the affected AOL-based folders works very much the same as with drag & drop, except the existing copy is never deleted from the source mailbox, so I suggest this is a better way to test for the problem than by risking any messages you might want to save.

3.a. Using the copy option may initially look like it succeeds, even when it doesn't. In my case, messages copied to "Saved" sometimes did appear there in Mail's view even after opening the "Saved" mailbox view, which I assume from Mail's Activity window does cause some small amount of syncing. However, within 10 seconds to about a minute, the newly copied message still disappears, which I assume is due to some server-side problem a 'full' sync shows.

4. Until AOL sorts out all the details of its "new" incarnation, It is probably best not to count on saving anything to its servers, even with the web mail interface.