Emails in Mail come and go

TidBITS Talk
1

I know I’ve run across this before, but today it’s more frustrating as it was an important email.

In April, I sent an email out that I need to reference again. I cannot find it. Knowing Mail’s search can be flaky, I fired up Info Click and cannot find it. I was able to pinpoint the date I sent it, and cannot find it. I actually referenced it a few weeks ago so I know it existed then.

This is in my Comcast email and in general, I never delete sent messages. I have seen this happen before, with Comcast. I’ll search for something and can’t find it, but it will show up a few days later.

Have I completely lost my mind?

Diane

2

Does comcast offer a webmail interface? Is the message there? If not, can you setup a different IMAP client (heck, is comcast even using IMAP?) and see the mail?

3

They do, but they recently required extra security to get on and I haven’t set it up yet. I suppose I should suck it up and do it.

They do use IMAP - actually I’ll check the old machine I had setup last week as I had to put my Comcast account on that.

It is possible I accidentally deleted it when I had it open last, but not incredibly likely.

Diane

4

In April, I sent an email out that I need to reference again. I cannot find it. Knowing Mail’s search can be flaky, I fired up Info Click and cannot find it. I was able to pinpoint the date I sent it, and cannot find it. I actually referenced it a few weeks ago so I know it existed then.

I’ve been able to find lost Mails via Spotlight or a general search on my iPad or iPhone. Spectrum/Roadrunner webmail search is useless and impossibly slow.

I had to switch to all IMAP a while ago, and I’m finding it to be problematic. In webmail, it created this extra folder that I can’t see on my Apple devices but only on my webmail. Sometimes stuff, mostly drafts from my mobile devices, shows up in there and I can’t figure out why. If you’re using IMAP, try checking it out.

Marilyn

5

Thanks - that’s a great idea I hadn’t thought of! I still couldn’t find it though. I did check the drafts etc. I’m guessing I must’ve had it open and hit the delete keystroke on it by mistake :frowning: Or maybe it will miraculously appear in a month or so :-/

I’m going to have to get into a better habit of moving important stuff to “On My Mac” - at least that way if there is an ISP glitch I’ll still have it.

I know what you mean about the extra folders - they are really annoying!

Diane

6

You should seriously consider getting an account somewhere that actually cares about email reliability, especially if you use the account for business. I’m still enamored of Fastmail.com after 10 years or so of use, though there are probably others. It’s not free ($30 or $50/year), but one of the things you’re paying for is being able to restore from backup. You do have to notice the loss fairly quickly though. They do daily backups, and keep 7 days of history:

Their web interface and on-server search are excellent too. If comcast has POP, you can have Fastmail fetch the comcast mail into the Fastmail account while you wean your contacts to the new address.