Mail disappearing out of Apple Mail Inbox...

I have a customer who's e-mail in their inbox, just disappears after a few days. Using an IMAP account, is there some setting that tells the mail program to dump the Inbox, or is there some sort of malware that causes this to happen, or is it an issue with the IMAP service? I have other Apple computer users who have not experienced this issue, or at least have not reported it. Does anyone know what caused this and how to stop it from happening?

Does the customer have any other devices using the same IMAP account? Keep in mind that with an IMAP account all mail is stored on the server and not on the device. A deletion or removal from any device using the same account will result in mail "disappearing" from their inbox. This is not malware but normal for IMAP accounts. Note that a POP account will not experience the same thing since mail is downloaded to the device and stored on the device.

IMAP Apple Mail customer...

To be honest, I don't know for sure, but I think they have iPhones, however the mail being lost is, of course, important mail, so I don't believe they have deleted them via their iPhone. Could or does the iPhone have a option to clear the Inbox of e-mail once it is read, when you exit it?

Thanks for the reply, by the way!

Could or does the iPhone have a option to clear the Inbox of e-mail once it is read, when you exit it?

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No, not automatically, however, he may be inadvertently removing the messages after they're read. You would need to check to see how he has it setup on his iPhone. If the option to remove mail after it's read is setup on his iPhone that will also result in it being removed from his inbox on the Mac. That's the way IMAP works. He should still be able to go direct to the server and have access to his mail unless he has chosen the option to remove mail from the server once it's been read. (Not a good idea.)

By the way, I sometimes tell users who have problems with their IMAP account such as missing mail (user error), etc, to switch the account to POP. Of course that may not be possible with some providers.

Actually we are moving away from the POP account system. Yeah, the down side of moving from the POP is the messages are in the cloud server, thus any device touching them can delete them with no residual copies left on any device, unless they save them to a pc some way or archive them some way.

The advantage of cloud is surely there, especially when it comes to email and you're dealing with a large volume of messages that you don't necessarily can / want to look through. What I would recommend is looking for a remotely hosted email providor instead of dealing with the Mac's system.

Thanks. We were trying to help a customer recover e-mails when we mistakenly deleted the OLD pop account from his iPhone, while adding a new type of account. We have since learned NOT to delete the old accounts, but to merely turn them off. As for the lost e-mail, well the price of learning on the fly! iPhones are not the only mail client that deletes ALL e-mails when you delete the e-mail account - Microsoft's Windows Live Mail will do the same thing. The old Microsoft Outlook Express spoiled us by letting us delete e-mail accounts and create new accounts, without dumping existing e-mail from the old accounts! Sorry all mail clients don't do this now.

Mac Mail works the same way as the old MS Outlook Express, however, you have to be aware that if you choose to remove mail from the server after it's downloaded, then all bets are off. MS Outlook Express worked exactly the same way if you opted to remove mail from the server after it was downloaded. I learned that the hard way during my long dealing with Windows.

Correct. MS Outlook Express, when you sat up a POP account, it defaulted to remove the copy of the e-mail from the server, each time you successfully cued the mail download from the server. So if you deleted it from your Inbox and then deleted it from "Deleted Items" it was gone for good. The Deleted Items folder acted as a check before permanently deleting e-mail that might be important. If you accidentally deleted e-mail from the Inbox, you could still recover it from the Delete Items. But, as I said, if I changed e-mail carriers and/or e-mail addresses, all my old mail stayed in the Inbox and other folders until I deleted it, and Deleted Items were 'Emptied'.

New MS Windows Live Mail, by default, even with POP accounts, leaves a copy of the mail out on the server, even though it is downloaded to the Inbox. This was mainly to accommodate smart phone and tablet users. However, if you delete that mail account off MS Windows Live Mail, it wipes all folders & sub-folder under that account out as well, and you can't get the mail that was in those folders back, even if you set the account back up exactly as you had it, all past mail is lost. I don't care for that feature. IMAP seems to have the edge over the POP account in that area.

Thanks again for the help.