Messages being deleted rather than stored in Trash

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Level 1

5 points

Messages being deleted rather than stored in Trash

I needed to refer today to an email I deleted around three weeks ago. When I looked in the Trash mailbox, there were only about 10 days' worth of emails in there – the rest had been automatically deleted DESPITE the mailbox being set never to permanently erase Sent, Junk or Deleted items. This is really scary; I carefully set my system up so that I couldn't lose anything even if accidentally deleted, and I now have no record of an email that unexpectedly turns out to be crucially important. Does anyone know why this is happening and how I can stop it? It's an IMAP system; this was the default setting when I first set up my Mac, and left it as that because I had no idea it would turn out to be so hideously unreliable! Thanks for any help you can give.

Posted on Jul 12, 2014 12:56 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 12, 2014 6:55 PM in response to iKittyp

Check your Mail preferences ...

From the Mail menu bar click Mail > Preferences then select the Accounts tab then the Mailbox Behaviors tab.

See: Trash

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Answer 2

iKittyp Author

Level 1

5 points

Jul 13, 2014 1:59 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

That's what I can't work out...Mailbox Behaviours was set right at the beginning never to delete anything & to store everything on the server, yet it's managed to delete most of the eight months of email history since I got the computer. I set it up like that because I don't have a huge amount of email traffic to clog up the system, and every now and again I find it would be useful to get info from a message that I've deleted. I've now set up a new account using POP rather than IMAP, but I thought it might be useful to others to post about it here, as they might also be losing stuff without realising. Not being able to produce evidence from an old email is going to cost me two days' income, I don't want anyone else to be in the same position!

Thanks for taking the time to get back to me, Carolyn. 😀

-Kitty

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