OSX Mail: Unprompted chronological trashing of email from random folders

[tonybee]

I have a very serious problem with my Mail application (Intel MacBook Pro, Tiger 10.5), which I use to consolidate several email accounts, both POP and IMAP. For a long time, I have suspected I was losing email messages via some strange deleting mechanism. I would often go back into various folders and find gaps of several weeks or months in the email chronology. I suspected I was doing something wrong.

Well, a week ago, I found that the culprit was the Mail program itself. Looking at messages in Trash, I found one that I clearly had not deleted. I tried to move it back to its folder, but was not allowed to do this, so moved it to the Inbox. Looking back at Trash, I then found THE NEXT EMAIL MESSAGE IN THE CHRONOLOGY OF THAT FOLDER. I didn't move this one, but erased all messages in Trash, closed Mail and opened it again. Voila, a new message that I did not delete. Sometimes these deleted messages continue the chronology of a given folder, but (apparently randomly) Mail sometimes turns its attention to a new folder and starts to trash messages there. The delete start point isn't necessarily the beginning of the folder; typically, these messages are from the middle of the folder.

Has anyone come across this behavior before? Better yet, anyone know a fix??

[Jay Carr]

Have you checked your rules settings in the preference menu? There could be a weird rule that's doing the deleting.

I've never heard of this before, it's quite weird. If there isn't a weird rule hanging about post back here, I think I've got a few ideas for this one.

[tonybee]

Thanks for replying to this one.

As for your question, I don't have any rules set in preferences. But here is something I have just noticed: if I leave the automatically trashed message in Trash, it stays put and is not replaced by another message. If I remove the trashed message (either by erasing trash messages or by moving the message to the Inbox), the new auto-trashed message looks like it the next message in chronological order... with no regard to the specific folder it originally lived in. I thought Mail was randomly switching folders after it trashed a few messages, but now it looks like it selects without regard to folder groupings.

Hope this narrows down the possibilities.

[Jay Carr]

Okay, well, the simplest idea is to rebuild the mailbox. Which you can do by going to the Mailbox menu and going to rebuild (which is the bottom most option.)

If that doesn't work then try this go to users/(your user/library and find the folder "preferences", in there should be a file called com.apple.mail. Put that onto your desk top. If it doesn't fix anything then put it back. If it does, then delete the com.apple.mail file from your computer (don't worry, Mail makes you a new one. And, if you do put the file back, don't worry about replacing the one mail made for you.)

This last bit of advice will replace your preferences, so it might mean having to reset a few things in Mail, which is a pain. But if it fixes it...

If neither of those work reply back, I can still think of a couple more things to try.

[tonybee]

Rebuilding changed the trashing behavior somewhat. Once I rebuilt all folders, the next message that was automatically trashed was the one email I had in the Inbox. When I moved that message from Trash back to the Inbox, Mail then auto-trashed the first message in my first mail folder. It is now eating its way, message by message, down through the subfolders of that first folder.

Moving com.apple.mail to the Desktop didn't change anything, unfortunately.

[Jay Carr]

Okay, one more try here. Try finding MessageRules.plist and moving that to the desk top. It should be in /(yourUser)/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist. There is also a MessageRulesBackup.plist that you need to move as well. If that doesn't work, try moving SmartMailboxes.plist to the desktop (and it's backup). And if that doesn't work, post back.

Edit: By the way, I've been unclear on something this entire time. You say "10.5 Tiger". Do you mean you have 10.5 Leopard. Or do you have 10.4 Tiger?

[PeterCorless]

Mail keeps "eating" inbound messages from various people. Tonight, two messages alone were eaten. One was even the confirmation that I registered for this service. o.O

So my Mac keeps eating my email!

Anyone else having problems?

If so, please let me know at 8daysoffline.blogspot.com.

I am trying to get my Mac diagnosed by Apple (Palo Alto store), but I would like more datapoints and "Yeah me toos!" from Appleheads.

-Pete.