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PSA: Apple Mail Bugs Can Lead to Data Loss in macOS Catalina

Zeitkind said:
Upgrade to Catalina --> Mail unusable, many mails no showing up, index/search completely broken
~/Library/Mail ~250GB
Closed Mail, removed index files in V7/Mail Data,
Envelope Index
Envelope Index-shm
Envelope Index-wal
Restarted Mail, standard import said importing somewhat 280.000 mail, but took only a few seconds...?? It's an iMac Pro, but...
Result: Most emails lost.
~/Library/Mail ~6,5GB
Yeah, 240GB of emails erased...

I don't know what bug that is, but it's frightening..
Click to expand...

240gb is pretty large ... I'm exchange with a local copy of around 50gb (100k emails) ... however, I clean installed and switched applications (outlook -> apple mail) ... all my exchange emails did import ... different story though ...

I've been using it for 10 days ... pretty solid .... VM fusion, parallels 14, and vbox ... limited host side applications installed ...

on the bug side, woke up this AM to find my 2017 iMac 5k/64Gb/3Tb machine wouldn't wake from sleep ... had to hard power cycle off and back on ... I'm sure support will have my try an SMC reset but still ...
 
macrem said:
so far it seems there would have to have been some kind of combo of events like using Exchange configured with imap (not exchange) protocol & +200GB data & using a virus scanner & after installation messing around with settings before the system could finish reindexing.
Click to expand...

Nope. There were some days trying to fix the Mail problem by eg. rebuilding Spotlight. So Mail was for sure ready and calm, just not working. Before trashing the index files, the Mac had no obvious background task rebuilding anything (like dozens of mds processes and such).
 
well, I moved all my folders under "Exchange" - set up new rules client side to move these messages and now getting a new error where certain ones can't be moved.

Most vague message ever.

error2.png


The message is one generated from Salesforce. It's an email notification, not an actual change in Calendar app. The "sales" folder is one of my sub-folders. I confirmed in O365 / Outlook webmail that it's there and the messages are moving to the folder correctly. No idea why this error pops up in the MacOS Mail client but it only happens for things being moved to this one folder.

Going to try removing the rule and folder, then re-create it to see what happens. This one never occurred when the folders were local.
 
> Apple Mail Bugs Can Lead to Data Loss in macOS Catalina

Does this affect POP mail accounts? Thanks.
 
I haven't had ONE issue in Catalina or iOS 13, I'm not sure what the fuss is about. Bugs happen, people act like no other OS EVER has any bugs, which is simply NOT true.
 
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FWIW, after waking up my 2012 MacBook tonight running Catalina and checking mail using the Mail app, it downloaded into the inbox seven messages marked as read I had previously deleted today on my iPad 6th gen. and iPhone 7. The iPad and iPhone then re-downloaded those messages into their inboxes. I deleted them again from the Mac, and they subsequently disappeared from the iPad and iPhone. All mails were from the one IMAP account I have configured across all devices.

I realize not everyone is having problems, but this is pretty scary behavior for me. I’ve never seen Mail act like this; I closed it on my MacBook to prevent it from screwing up the already-buggy Mail on iOS and iPadOS even further.

For folks who aren’t having problems, I hope they don’t trivialize the problems some are having. This is seriously buggy behavior that could cost people a lot of time and money.

I’d go back to Eudora from 1994 if I could. 😄
 
wolfme said:
I don’t know wher to begin, but a lot of misinformation here. First, Outlook is an email client that works with Exchange, IMAP and POP servers. I’ve been using Outlook with our company’s Exchange server and personal IMAP email servers for years. Outlook is definitely not a POP centric email client. Outlook has its problems, and Apple and Microsoft have often had issues in the past. However, stop making excuses for Apple. They just aren’t great at software, and they are getting worse. I’ve worked developing software for the Mac for thirty years, and they never cease to amaze me at their incompetence in software development. That said, I’ve seen a steady decline in recent years for IOS and Mac OS/OSX.
Click to expand...

Uh... Microsoft owns all their own problems. Someone here mentioned similar issues I've seen with the same service, and passed along my experience along.

Maybe you've got some special developer magic, but handling this problem, at a modest corporate media level, was a massive waste of time and money.

Good riddance.
 
Also wondering about this.

I installed Catalina but before doing it I disabled my email accounts in Mail and set Mail to *not* open on startup, to make sure it wouldn't mess up my accounts. Keeping it disabled is a bit of a nuisance, though...
 
FormIr said:
I installed Catalina but before doing it I disabled my email accounts in Mail and set Mail to *not* open on startup, to make sure it wouldn't mess up my accounts. Keeping it disabled is a bit of a nuisance, though...
Click to expand...
How did you continue? Or are you still waiting...? :rolleyes:
 
mac.fly said:
How did you continue? Or are you still waiting...? :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

I am still getting missing contents in previews. Exchange account with cloud synched folders. Not "on my Mac".

The emails come in, I see an unread count. In the preview column I can see the from name but the 1-2 line previews are blank. Clicking on the email is blank. If I scroll away, click on an existing email, then go back to that new email, it is now there. So seems like more of a memory leak that is persisting.
 
I would also love to know this…

I'm in the same position, and find it odd that there was so much noise about this initially, but seemingly no quick reaction from Apple. Talk seems to have died down, or have I missed updates?
 
I waited until 10.15.1 before upgrading from Mojave and haven’t had any mail issues. I presume since this thread seems to be dead, the issues have been resolved. Otherwise, it would be much more active.
 
Max Book said:
Has this mail big been resolved or is it still happening? I want to update to Catalina but I’m afraid....
Click to expand...

Not for me it isn't. I am still getting missing body in emails (very sporadicly, for instance the last 2 weeks were fine and only yesterday I had a batch of 5-8 messages come in that showed subject only and no body - but this morning, the emails are coming in again as normal)

I have no idea what's causing it but if I use Outlook for Mac, they all render fine. It's some sort of memory / bug / disconnect / Voodoo between Exchange and Mac Mail. I really don't want to have to start using Outlook but might have no choice. Too many missed emails.
 
I'm so bummed... I don't even know how to express what's happened.
I've had email in Mac Mail for years. Archived emails dating back to 2002. Approx 400GB of messages and attachments.

All lost. My mail file is now 17GB.
Not only that Catalina randomly lost about a year of ical events.
Unbelievable.
 
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clarencek said:
I'm so bummed... I don't even know how to express what's happened.
I've had email in Mac Mail for years. Archived emails dating back to 2002. Approx 400GB of messages and attachments.

All lost. My mail file is now 17GB.
Not only that Catalina randomly lost about a year of ical events.
Unbelievable.
Click to expand...

Did this happen soon after upgrading to Catalina, or have you been fine on Catalina for weeks/months and then this suddenly happened out of the blue?
 
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baryon said:
Did this happen soon after upgrading to Catalina, or have you been fine on Catalina for weeks/months and then this suddenly happened out of the blue?
Click to expand...

I believe it happened when I upgraded to Catalina. Of course once I did the upgrade, it's not like I went through and scanned all my old emails.
I think it occurred when mail was reindexing and building the new mboxes when I did the upgrade.
But I don't now exactly when.
The worst part is that at the same time my time machine backup was corrupted and of course i started a new backup with Catalina... so the data is lost.

I'm beyond myself. As a die hard Mac user since 1987, I've never had this data loss ever.
I'm super disappointed and to make matters worse the support person was like - well, you should have backed up your data like we suggested.
It's years of work data and email. Unbelievable.
 
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There’s suggestion (in comments on the blog that’s referenced in the article) that the 10.15.3 beta includes bug-fixes tied to this issue…
 
I had the same problem with content missing after moving messages between local/offline mailboxes. Issues seems to be resolved after upgrading to 10.15.3 yesterday. Messages that lost content are still missing that content, but now moving messages doesn't cause the body to disappear any longer.
 
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My 2019 imac 27 automatically upgraded to 10.15.3 and now my notes and mail are completely new, meaning that they are not setup and there is no data. I have not lost anything because I have a MacBook with the same accounts. This is unacceptable. I would expect this from Windows but not from Apple.
 
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This issue seems to be everywhere on the interweb ... yes, really poor form from Apple in Catalina's Mail still being a problem & remains on Catalina 10.15.5. My 2 cents:

I use several mail accounts including Gmail, Exchange & iCloud. Despite zeroing Mail & starting from scratch - it then rebuilds all of the zillions of folders & sub-dirs from my email archives, then takes quite some time to visibly 'download' over 30k emails and attachments from work over the last xx years. The thing is, none of the emails themselves are visible anywhere except for 'sent mail'; all of the dirs show as empty. This complaint is featured widely on Apple fora but they seem to have no clue.

Elsewhere, other email clients on other devices (eg Win laptop & workstation, iPad, Galaxy phone) all continue to show, update & download all of the email, attachments & dir information correctly. Clearly Apple Mail is not 'destroying' everyone's email archives, but is simply not displaying them for whatever dopey reason /bug. Apple self-proclaimed 'Genius' bar? I don't think so ....

The other clients I've used include EM Client (mac & win), Outlook (mac & win) & MailBird (Win - I do wish they'd do a mac version). They all work just fine & one of the better features I've become used to is that calendar, contacts, reminders etc are all integrated into the one app (vs being forced to run several different apps in Apple land). Answer then: use another email client.

*update: this thread got me thinking about the issue again:
Went at it again, finally managed to fix it and indeed *everything* in now there again in Apple Mail: by deleting every Mail pref, Mailboxes, Internet accounts, rebooting in between, also running Onyx to delete any Mail index (just to be sure). In sum, this article pretty much covers it: appletoolbox.com/mail-not-working-in-macos-catalina-how-to-fix/
 
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