Apple Mail is not saving drafts

Question

David Grant Author

Level 1

25 points

Apple Mail is not saving drafts

I just spent two hours working on a reply to an email. I saved it several times (using Apple Mail/save).

Apple Mail seemed to unexpectedly quit (though it's possible I accidentally closed it).

I opened it and looked for my email in DRAFTS. It was not there.

I also used Time Machine to look. It was not there at all.

I then purposefully made a new message -- and also a 'reply' message -- to see if they would save as Drafts. They would not.

I do have other drafts in my Drafts folder from as recently as September 9th.

What is going on?

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Sep 13, 2016 8:02 AM

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Answer 1

JemimaP

Level 1

27 points

Nov 1, 2017 5:08 PM in response to David Grant

This happened to me today. Writing email on iMac. Saved it to finish later. No draft.

No draft mail on iMac nor on Windows 10 pc.

However found draft on iPad and on iPhone so was able to recover.

What's going on here?

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Answer 2

tygb

Level 9

65,016 points

Sep 13, 2016 8:21 AM in response to David Grant

You have checked the box as per screen shot and they are saved on the server , to show in IMAP account uncheck it .

Thanks !

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Answer 3

David Grant Author

Level 1

25 points

Sep 13, 2016 8:24 AM in response to tygb

That's a good place to look (I had not). But I don't think it helps since these are my settings:

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Answer 4

David Grant Author

Level 1

25 points

Sep 13, 2016 8:56 AM in response to David Grant

I just noticed that the Google email address I used in my previous posting here is different that the Google email address I'm having trouble with.

I'm having trouble with an address that is an alias made through Google (my business address). For that account, these are the settings:

And I note further that there are NO drafts from that email address in the mail DRAFTS folder (which goes back to May 2016).

I wonder if I change the settings to match the other Google address (an @gmail.com address), it will matter?

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Answer 5

tygb

Level 9

65,016 points

Sep 13, 2016 10:02 AM in response to David Grant

Please set junk mail messages when from never to one week old , if you keep as Never they will be never deleted from your junk folder .

Once messages are deleted from trash why option store deleted messages on the server should be checked , you have deleted them in trash because they were not useful , so there is no sense of keeping them on server .

Permanently erase deleted item can be set as one week old or one day as per choice , usually mails are deleted from server after 30 days .

The first option store drafts on server should be checked .

When ever you compose any mail in sent its copy is stored in drafts , in case you go offline and wants do some changes in mails that are not yet sent , you can make changes in drafts and can sent that mail in a day or two by going online

, so in this case option store drafts messages on the server is unchecked .

Correct settings is :

Thanks !

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