[ClaraT]

Messages are disappearing in one of my email accounts. Using Yosemite 10.10.1, Mail 8.1.

First I had issues with sending from this one account and I spent most of the morning with my ISP resetting everything in mail preferences. While I was on the phone with them changing a port number, all the messages vanished. The ISP says it's an Apple issue because my messages are showing up in my web mail account.

Just spent 1.5 hours on Apple chat, where we reset everything in my mail preferences to send and receive from this account. Got that working, but couldn't get the thousands of prior messages back. She referred me to call for a senior adviser and gave me my case number because she wanted to help get those messages back.

I kid you not, as soon as the chat ended, all the messages vanished AGAIN! I did nothing to any of the settings.

So when I started out today, I had several thousand emails in this account. They're gone.
While on the iChat, 17 from today came in, from testing and so forth. Now they're gone. Poof!!

I've been struggling with this account all morning from 9:30 to now 2:45. This is nuts!
I've never had this kind of an issue with my mac mail AND IN FACT everything on my old macbook running Leopard is still A-OK!! No issues whatsoever which leads me to believe this is Yosemite or the Mail program. I initially had trouble with this one email account when I first set up the new computer about 10 days ago. It resolved a day or so later, now this.

Arrrgggghhh!!

[ClaraT]

I just wasted another f-----ing hour and fifteen minutes with an Apple "Senior Service Advisor"!!! This guy was useless.

The two junior techs gave me better help than he did and I waited 20 minutes just to talk with him.

A junior tech had me rebuild the problem email account and in doing so 1100 emails came pouring in which was good, except there was a gap. There were no emails from between Dec. 11, 2014 and today.

Where are those messages?

And there are no outgoing messages visible in the Sent folder even though I've sent dozens.

I have two POP accounts and this one is giving me fits even though they both use the same outgoing server.

I know this is a Mac Mail 8.1 and/or Yosemite 10.10 because:

1. Mail is behaving perfectly on my old computer, running Leopard. All the messages are there. Nothing has changed.
2. All my messages for this account are visible on my web mail for this account with my ISP.
3. There are missing messages in the new mail program on the new MacBook Pro. I can't find them.

When the senior guy was working with me on this we tested gmail to see if it was sending and receiving ok. This Apple guy could see my screen and when the test message came in from gmail, from the gmail server, it came in without the little blue dot that indicates it's an unopened message. It looked like it had been opened. I asked him, "Why does it look like it's been read? I didn't open it." He could see it, and just replied, "Yea, I don't know."

Please. That's the best you can do. Several email issues here and he can't explain. He would not admit this is an Apple/Mac Mail/Yosemite issue. His parting words were "Yosemite prefers IMAP accounts."

[ghporter]

If the messages are there in the web version of your mail, the ISP is correct - it IS an Apple issue. I've had issues with Mail telling me that one Gmail account isn't properly configured, even though it's configured identically to the other Gmail accounts I have in Mail, and those all work...

I've found that sometimes mail accounts will choke at a certain number of megabytes transferred. In other words, if your account caught up to December 14, it could simply be that you ran out of data transfer quota for the moment, and it could catch up later. Sent mail is probably synced in a separate run, and that could explain the lack of sent mail on your machine.

I'd hope that waiting a while would let things catch up. As for Yosemite "preferring" IMAP, I personally prefer IMAP as well. POP is clunky, not terribly secure, and depending on how it's configured (at both ends) it's susceptible to data loss. IMAP is much better at those things, especially in protecting you from data loss.

[ClaraT]

I appreciate your weighing in and validating this weirdness. What you've suggested sure makes sense.

Up until Dec. 12th I had all my messages going back to March 2013 in this one account. Then the disappearing act occurred a few days ago and now there's a gap where messages are missing from Dec. 12-15th and it appears to be permanent.

It's not the end of the world, and fortunately I still have my good ol' Leopard humming along storing all my incoming messages without a hitch.

Mostly I'm bummed that Apple is now quirky with this PC-like behavior. I've owned Macs since 1997 and never, ever felt any bumps or turbulence in upgrading or getting a new machine. It was always the most seamless of transitions.