All sent mail disappeared from Sent Mail folder in Sequoia

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Level 1

73 points

All sent mail disappeared from Sent Mail folder in Sequoia

Got a new MBA M3 and I love it. But suddenly, like today, my Sent Mail folder is empty. Oh, except for one lonely email from back in 2016! I sent myself test emails -- they show up in my Inbox but not in Sent Mail. They are in the webmail sent folder. If I search for a subject line, the emails show up, but not in the sent folder. I've seen similar problems going back years but haven't found any causes let alone solutions. My accounts (IMAP) are all enabled with the correct server settings -- I've changed nothing. I tried synching from the drop-down menu -- if that did anything I couldn't tell, but I think everything is synched already because IMAP. Everything imported perfectly from my old Big Sur MBA. Oddly, and this may be a clue, the Sent Mail folder on that computer is empty too! I'm thinking server? But everything is there. I called the ISP (Comcast) but got no help -- they were going to call me back after a half hour, that was 2 hours ago.

I called Apple but got no real help, although she said it might have something to do with updating Sequoia to 15.1, but I did that like a week or more ago and there were no problems. Just today -- everything is gone. I haven't tried rebuilding, but that didn't seem to work for other people in the Community. Restarting -- nada.

Any suggestions greatly appreciated.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 15.1

Posted on Nov 3, 2024 7:38 PM

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Answer 1

william98 Author

Level 1

73 points

Nov 4, 2024 11:42 PM in response to william98

Well, I got it all straightened out -- two one-hour calls with Comcast (which had inexplicably deauthorized/invalidated one of my email accounts; the second call got me a guy who worked and worked at it and figured it all out, it wasn't easy. At. All. And another two hours with an Apple tech who was simply marvelous in all ways. She fixed everything, and it also wasn't easy. At. All. Rebuilding the database didn't help at all. Combined, there were some very involved maneuvers I couldn't possibly describe here but they did include screen sharing (and when that didn't always work letting her see the screen through my iPhone camera), changing my Comcast password (which I didn't know, so had to go through iCloud email -- wait, I have an iCloud email account? Who knew? Wait...password? I have a password?); deleting and adding back my Apple Mail accounts, and I don't know what else. Password here, password there, everywhere a password. But magically all my sent emails started reappearing.

The Apple tech told me that an update could do such a thing, but I had updated Sequoia a week prior to this happening. And it's probably not a coincidence that the Comcast thing happened at the same time as the Mail thing, and since everything is IMAP it happened on all my devices -- three computers and an iPhone. Oh! Oh! And it happened right when we switched off Daylight Savings Time! That must have been the tipping point. ;-) Anyway, it's all better, and for others who are having the Great Disappearing Sent Mail Catastrophe, especially if you recently updated, maybe start with making sure your ISP is working right and try deleting and adding the Mail accounts. Oh yeah, and tattoo your passwords on yourself.

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