Mailbox Problems

Note: The following discussion was originally written with reference to Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4. Please read it with that in mind.

If you're experiencing puzzling or frustrating mailbox behavior, there may be a quick fix. Of course, the efficacy of any particular fix depends on exactly what the underlying causes are - and symptoms of Mail problems can range from missing messages to failure to connect to the mail server.

When you run into (pretty much any) problem with your Mac, the first best place to seek Help is, funnily enough, the Help feature! You invoke Help from the Help menu, then type one or two keywords that seem relevant to your problem into the text field. You'll see a short list of topics beneath the Help menu. Now click on one of the topics. This will open up a page of advice that may be all you need to fix the problem.

Here's an example:

Say you're having a problem seeing any messages listed for a particular Mailbox. Click on the Help menu, type "missing messages"; you'll see a list of topics, including "If messages disappeared from mailboxes". If you click on that topic, you'll see a Help page like this:

"If messages disappeared from mailboxesIf all the messages in a mailbox have disappeared and are missing, it’s possible the mailbox contains too many messages and attachments. This can happen with mailboxes whose sizes range from hundreds of megabytes to more. Although you can’t see your messages, they’re still in the mailbox.

Here are ways to redisplay the messages:

• If you have multiple email accounts, view the inbox for each account separately, instead of viewing the Inbox mailbox. The Inbox mailbox displays messages from all of your accounts, and all of those messages together might be too large to be displayed.
• Quit Mail and then reopen it."

If Help is not enough to fix the problem, Apple has a helpful article on their web site that explains what might be going on if your messages suddenly disappear, how to fix it and how to prevent it happening again. The Rebuild function can help with other problems too, especially if they involve unexpected things happening with messages, as opposed to connection problems.

Below is an extract - we recommend you read the full article for further information that will help your Mail work smoothly.

Try these tips:

• Update to the latest version of Mac OS X [...] Even if this works, check out "How can I prevent it from happening again?" [in the full article].
• From the Mailbox menu, choose Rebuild.
• Quit Mail and open it again. If Mail had been open a while, this might help. Even if this works, check out "How can I prevent it from happening again?" [in the full article].
• If you use more than one account, for example "Account 1" and "Account 2", instead of clicking on the "In" mailbox, click on either "Account 1" or "Account 2" that appear beneath "In" (as well as beneath Sent and Trash, for example). That way you'll only see messages related to that specific account. If your two account mailboxes are big individually, but not big enough to cause this issue, when viewed together (by just clicking "In" for example), the issue may occur.

How can I prevent it from happening again?

[Read the full article]