Why is Mail automatically removing old messages?

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Barks

Soldato
Joined
20 Jul 2008
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4,539
As in subject, on my IMAP BT account it is automatically removing messages that are one month old and causing me a serious amount of stress in doing so. Does anyone know how to stop this? I want every single message that is on the server to be in Mail and vice-versa.

Cheers
 
On all my IMAP accounts they stay there until I move them to a folder on my Mac and/or I delete them.

There is no option to disable this monthly deletion because it's not deleting emails without you saying so!

So I conclude it's BT doing it.
 
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It's only showing about 50 emails in Mail.

There are thousands on the actual BT server if I login via the website.
 
I doubt it's Mail - it could be BT only allowing access to the last 30 days email over IMAP? Have you tried another mail client like Thunderbird?
 
Oh **** I just logged in and I'm wrong, something has wiped my account clean and there are only 210 messages.

I wonder how the rest have been deleted, something has wiped 10 years worth of emails. Seriously angry.
 
Sounds like you need to speak to BT!

Do you use Time Machine? If so it should have backed up your old messages as Mail caches IMAP mail locally.
 
I'm trying Time Machine now but not really sure how to access the emails.

I reckon it's iCloud.

I've disabled Mail syncing. I can't think what else would be doing it and if it's trying to Sync them and the iPhone can only hold 200 messages then perhaps it's deleting everything in order to sync the two.

Apple = Complete Fail
 
From now on I'm archiving my inbox every week.

Thank God I actually put a thread on here a month ago asking how to do just that and all my messages are there. I still don't understand how more recent messages have been deleted, the alarm bells started ringing when my employer asked for an email from someone which I definitely would never, ever had deleted.

Cheers
 
scott212 said:
I'm trying Time Machine now but not really sure how to access the emails.

I reckon it's iCloud.

I've disabled Mail syncing. I can't think what else would be doing it and if it's trying to Sync them and the iPhone can only hold 200 messages then perhaps it's deleting everything in order to sync the two.

Apple = Complete Fail
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No and no.

1. Assuming your iCloud account uses your email address then how on earth would that be accessing your email account!?
2. Mail on your iPhone shows the 200 [or whatever you've set it to] most recent emails, it doesn't delete them off the servers, just off the phone itself when the 200 limit is up.


scott212 said:
From now on I'm archiving my inbox every week.

Thank God I actually put a thread on here a month ago asking how to do just that and all my messages are there. I still don't understand how more recent messages have been deleted, the alarm bells started ringing when my employer asked for an email from someone which I definitely would never, ever had deleted.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Well if your copying them from the inbox to your mac folders then they are removed from the servers. So maybe you are doing it by accident when you copy them across?
 
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Tonight I received absolutely crucial emails which have just vanished into thin air.

If I delete a message in my inbox it goes to the deleted items on the server.

What the **** is going on with this? Sorry for the frustration I just don't understand!!!
 
Right well the ones I thought had vanished have in fact been turned into 'conversations' in Mail. For example, I received an email and forwarded it onto someone who replied. The original email in my inbox vanished and was replaced with the email I received back. What the hell were Apple thinking, this is confusing.

How do I stop this or revert Mail back to its original form. The new one is awful.
 
Ok guys sorry I lost my cool. I've unpicked 'Organise by Conversation' and reverted to classic and I finally now know what is going on.

Conversations seem highly unintuitive and counter productive.
 
scott212 said:
Ok guys sorry I lost my cool. I've unpicked 'Organise by Conversation' and reverted to classic and I finally now know what is going on.

Conversations seem highly unintuitive and counter productive.
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You get used to it, very useful when you have a string of emails as it sorts the indented text out into the correct order, etc.

And if you want something kept on the server when you delete it then you need to check the "Keep deleted messages on the server" under account settings -> mailbox behaviours :)
 
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