Important sent email message just disappeared!

[alstemp]

Hi everyone

Last weekend I purchased a Mac Book Pro after 17 years of Windows.
Slowly getting used to it and so far good experience. only thing I haven't really been able to do yet however is set up my AOL account so it sends emails on Mac mail as well as receives them. will keep working on that.

anyway - just now I pressed send on an email generated on mac book pro Mac mail (AOL), forgetting I needed to use my web mail AOL to send mails. But I figured would be ok as it would sit in my Outbox anyway. I clicked the "send" paper plane icon. But now I cannot find the email anywhere!!! It was addressed to myself on my aol email. THe sent email is not in the sent email folder (or the AOL sent folder that is bottom of the left and menu). Nor is the sent email in my Outbox folder. and if i check webmail AOL it is nto there either. Nor is it in Trash. I have opened every single folder on my Mac mail and AOL webmail email but it has completely vanished.

I am dying here as I am writing a novel and wrote about 1,000 words earlier on this. so having bit of a heart attack! i could see that the draft was being saved at regular intervals. the email is not in my drafts either.

is there any way of getting it back ? or has it truly gone forever into the other and I wil never get it back??? even if the draft email was being saved?

If i turn my mac book on & off again/reboot it, will that make any difference or will it lessen the chance of me finding that sent email even more???


any help hugely appreciated.

thanks

 

[jk73]

Assuming you have your mail settings configured properly, the email should either have been sent properly or been saved in the Drafts folder. It's odd that it's (apparently) in neither.

It's possible that after quitting Mail and re-launching that a new folder called Recovered Messages will appear with your message. That happened with me once a week ago, when my internet connection died just as I sent an email. If not, I don't know what to tell you, as the message shouldn't have just disappeared if your settings were correct (or even if they weren't).

Have you tried searching for some of the words in the email to see if Mail can locate it?

Moving forward, I'd highly recommend using a text editor for your novel and keeping multiple copies of it, both on the MBP and on external storage (USB stick, etc.). Good luck.

 

[alstemp]

Thank you so much - yes I searched for a word in the email content and it found it! Turned up in an outbox folder where I hadn't seen it before. Thanks for suggesting this option, saved me from a heart attack for sure! Yes I will use the text editor route for future scripts. Thanks again