Mail deleting ALL of my gmails

[MountOcean]

Hello Community,

I have several email accounts (as we all do) and have been using mac mail for ~15 years. All good so far.

Today all of the emails in BOTH of my unrelated gmail accounts went blank! I mean ________ Blank. All the the emails in both accounts were completely erased.

Of course I emailed google and got the standard automatic reply that my emails were lost and could not be recovered. I still have no idea why or how.

I've since recovered my gmail messages from time machine but as soon as I take "all accounts online" ALL of the gmails disappear again!

I have several devices all synced - iPhone, two laptops etc and all gmail messages are erased from all devices. I've logged into my gmail webmail and all emails are gone from there too. I'm guessing mail sync property is deleting everything?



I know this is a apple forum, but it mail has worked with my gmail accounts for years and I was in mail that that emails disappeared from.



Help and helpful sarcasm appreciated.



Thanks

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

That is a strange situation indeed.

-Which version of OS X?
-Do you have other email accounts setup in Mail that are not affected?
-Are all of the emails in the inbox, or in online folders?
-What happens if you move some of the emails to folders on your Mac before taking the accounts online?
-How many emails are we talking?
-Have you checked the email settings/preferences in Gmail webmail?

If this is only happening with the Gmail accounts, then it sounds like some settings or something on Google's end, especially since it is replicated across all of your devices.

C

 

[MountOcean]

Hey C,
Thanks for the reply. After posting I found a similar problem that was "solved" in another chat room here.
The "Solve" didn't exactly get me back to where I was. My emails were recovered but are now in a tremendous mess and all the folders have been jumbled together. I can still search the entire mess to find what I need but all the strings are no longer linked.

Basically according this linked thread, Mail decided that all my emails were trash and put EVRYTHING in the trash folder. This was done on all my devices and then according in both gmail webmail accounts. When I would restore my emails from timemachine everything was fine until i would take it online and then watch as every email was deleted in about 5 seconds. This was because it was connecting to Gmail and every email was currently in the trash and so mail would move eventing into the trash - but not on my devices - only online. SO on my devices everything was just GONE!

The "fix" was described in the linked above thread - go to each gmail account webmail, select all the emails in the trash and move all to the inbox. Once done, Mail then repopulated my devices respective inboxes. However, the repopulated emails had lost ALL the threads and even the Mail-auto-saved emails were in there also - all 1567 of them! SO, i didn't lose everything just the order and sequence. How and why - who knows - its likely to do with my changing passwords on once device and then having to do it on all my other devices or who knows?!

Your questions if not described above:
Sierra 10.12.6
Yes, I have several other emails (hotmail, hostgator, university) emails that were not affected
37,000 emails - i know, i know :-/

 

[Cory Cooper]

Maybe it is how the accounts are setup on the devices - IMAP vs POP?

C