Apple Mail deletes all mail on all devices

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Apple Mail deletes all mail on all devices

I'm a long time Mac user, but first time Mail user. With Microsoft not updating Outlook to 64-bit, I've decided to switch to Mail, but I'm having serious issues with it.

With Outlook, after my emails downloaded to my computer, they automatically deleted from my ISP's server. With Mail, I have to do a manual delete on the server. What I discovered, and freaked me out, was that by deleting off the server, it automatically deleted everything off my computer. Similarly, when I deleted the emails off my iPad, the automatically deleted off my computer.

An Apple Support person told me that Mail acts more as a place-holder, unlike Outlook. I'm also told that this is the way it works and can't be modified. I could create folders and file keepers in them, but I am just not that organised (and my wife, less so).

Does anyone have relevant insights into Mail behaviours? I can't use Mail in its current form.

iMac 21.5", macOS 10.14

Posted on Apr 29, 2019 3:16 AM

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Answer 1

Barney-15E

Level 10

116,734 points

Apr 29, 2019 3:26 AM in response to Anthony Johnsen

When you configured you email accounts in Mail, they were configured as IMAP. On Outlook, you were using the POP protocol.

IMAP stores all messages on the server, not on your Mac. Mail will download them to your Mac for local access, but they are all stored on the server so that you can access them from anywhere, on any device.

You may be able to configure your email accounts to use POP. You must delete the email accounts and start to add them.

When it asks for the username and password, just put in garbage values for both. It should fail to establish an account. At that point, it should allow you to manually configure the account where you can choose POP.

Since you access your account from both the computer and iPad, IMAP is a better choice. If you want to move messages off the server, you can do so by dragging them into Mailboxes you create in Mail "On My Mac." File > New Mailbox and choose ON MY MAC as the location of the folder.

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Answer 2

Apr 29, 2019 4:35 AM in response to Barney-15E

Thanks Barney. I've set up a couple of mailboxes with relevant rules and that seems to solve my problem.

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Apple Mail deletes all mail on all devices

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