New to Mail.app

nickdennys - 08:36pm Apr 14, 2006 PST

I used Mailbox Cleaner (converting from Eudora) and it preserved all I wanted in the transfer to Mail. Some time after when all was 'safely' in Mail I got an alarming problem which caused loss of mail. I don't know if this was to do with Mail or me. I am a fairly low level user but if it is me then there is something pretty counter intuitive about Mail that made it easy to manufacture this problem. If it is to do with Mail I am inclined to stick with Eudora. But I can't decide until I know the cause. I wonder if others have had a similar problem?

I had Eudora on two old computers which had the same folder of archived emails with some small differences. I transfered both to Mail on a third new computer with the intention of ditching the other two computers to simplify life. (I also thought working with Mail would be simpler as it was part of Apple's family of programs).

Somehow, one lot ended up in one of Mail's blue folders and the other in one of its white folders, both with the same name. I couldn't see a way of opening both folders at once so I could review duplicates side by side and delete, so I decided to transfer all the emails in the white folder to the blue and reckoned it would be easer to strip out duplicates when they were side by side in the one folder. Either then, or before I transfered emails from white to blue folder, I made a backup CD just in case. I then deleted the now empty white folder. But when I opened the, now sole, blue folder to work on the duplicates it was completely empty too. All my emails had been stripped from both folders, even the few emails that were different between them, and even though I had deleted no emails, but only one empty folder. I then looked on the back up CD, rather pleased that for no good reason I had doubted the transfer. To my alarm, I found that the folders that had contained the emails when backed up were empty when I looked there also. Yet when I made the copy I was able to see the emails listed in the folders and open them. At screen level they were there but at storage they weren't.

The lost emails were not present in the Trash. I couldn't find anything in Mail Help which explained what had happened.

Somehow the program appeared to have been able to list and present email contents on screen, while on another level, when backing up, failed to record or their presence or preserve a connection to them.

I took my computer in to an Apple repair place but they could not find the lost emails.

If this problem is caused by my error in use I nonetheless feel that it is very counter intuitive in Mail to have a trivial difference in appearance - white or blue folders - representing a major difference in function. Over several years and various transfers I never had such a problem with Eudora.

Has anyone else had this problem?

Nick Dennys



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