Mac Mail Disaster

[EdSinger]

Years ago I moved to MacOS as soon as it was available. All the serious problems I have experienced since then concern Mac Mail. Twice I almost decided that Mail is intrinsically unreliable. Now - the third time - I am almost resolved to get rid of it.

(A) Monthly, I file invoices for rental property in two sub-mailboxes of a single parent mailbox. Today I had an incoming invoice but when I tried to file it, the parent had disappeared. I was puzzled to find that going back a year with Time Machine the items were still missing from the list of mailboxes. I also have another parent mailbox with a sub-file each for a month historic emails. (This to prevent IMAP server capacity problems)

(B) Another mailbox (M) that was not a parent has now become parent of the oldest historic month, October 2017. My Time Machine database dates only from May 2019, where the picture now appears as it is today! As the database for Time Machine has clearly been corrupted, I dare not try to restore anything.

(C) Another very important mailbox, not a parent, has become a parent, but collapsed. When expanded I see it is the parent of the parent of my two lost rental property mailboxes. Unlike case (B), this appears not to have affected the entire TM database. It flips back to normal about June 13/14 - a couple weeks ago!

(D) Among the mailboxes appeared a mailbox that has since disappeared, containing 29 files called recovered messages xx. I looked at some of them - nothing important. Went back later to look at the name of the parent - it had gone. All very worrying.

Some details : Mac Pro (late 2013) Mojave 10.14.6 - /System SSD external 1 Tb. /Time Machine SSD, external 2 Tb. Used 1.05 Tb, Available 0.949 Tb.
All equipment powered by a reliable UPS. Mac Mail is vsn. 12.4

With the previous big Mail problem (2016?) I purchased licence for PostBox, but did not implement as upgrading OS also brought a new version of Mail. However I upgraded Postbox twice - one free, another paid for, as an insurance policy. Time to abandon Mail perhaps? Or could Time Machine database going beyond 1 Tb be responsible? Or am I suffering from malware intruder? Any help welcome!

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

Let me digest and think about this, and I will get back to you.

C

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello,

Sorry, I didn't forget about this. It is a very perplexing issue. I am still trying to decide on what could be causing the issue.

-The first thing that comes to mind, is that the mailboxes are accidentally being dragged and reordered. But that doesn't explain their "movement" in the Time Machine backups.
-Second, would be where the mailboxes actually "are" - i.e. in the sidebar in Mail. Are they in the On My Mac section, or one of you email providers IMAP section?
-The Time Machine size would not have any effect

Any updates since you last posted?

C

 

[EdSinger]

Thanks for coming back Cory - I agree, it is perplexing. Not sure what you mean by the IMAP section of the Mail presentation, but certainly the two mailboxes were created as children of a parent that was 'on my Mac'. I don't think there is an obvious way in which I could ever have reconnected mailboxes to alternative parents except by deleting them and recreating them with a different parent. That would involve first backing up the contents before deletion - such an operation - or the reason for it - I could not possibly forget. While I agree that if Time Machine got confused it would likely abandon the entire backup operation and leave everything as before, I cannot understand the coincidence that it has made longstanding core data - going back a year - agree with the incorrect position that arose only on June 24th. Further, I worry about the coincidence that judging from the size of a typical daily backup, my 2Tb Time Machine SSD would have hit the half-way point on or around June 13/14. See (C) in my post. The SSD is a Samsung T5 - 2 Tb, but I cannot see from Disk Utility how it is formatted. It is now happily into the second terabyte with no irregularities noted. I have not lost data and so there is no panic, only that uneasy feeling! Thanks again Cory.

 

[Cory Cooper]

No worries.

I just meant in the sidebar of Mail, it will show an On My Mac section for folders created on your Mac, and will also show sections for IMAP (server-based folders) for accounts - i.e. iCloud, Gmail, etc.

Glad to hear it seems to have settled down and is working normally now.

C

 

[EdSinger]

About 'that uneasy feeling'. It is perhaps a waste to spend more time on this problem and so I should discourage further effort unless someone can see a solution. I cannot therefore in good faith declare the 'problem solved'. However, I offer some thoughts as to what might have screwed up my metadata – it goes like this: I am the only user of my Mac Pro. I think it is probably impossible for me to reconnect an extant mailbox as a child of another mailbox. Easy enough to create a new child - but not to connect two extant files in that way. Assuming that it IS possible however, I had no reason to do so. Further, if I had wanted to do it, and knew how to do it, there was no relationship between the resultant parent and the mailboxes that went missing. No other human could access my files or know the password to my m/c. Otherwise, only Mac Mail and Time Machine would need to access this metadata, and Mail only when I am driving it via keyboard commands. T/M churns through that metadata several times a day however, without my involvement. If I find a solution I shall certainly make this forum aware of it, and thanks Cory for your efforts.
E