Mail (El Capitan) automatically purges my Inbox every month and, of course, I don’t want that to happen. Checking with my ISP shows a ‘rolling’ month of messages (only) on the server and they tell me nothing they do there could make this happen even if they wanted it to. Mail Preferences provides this capability for other mailboxes (Drafts, Sent, Junk, Trash) via a drop-down menu selection but Inbox is purposely left out; the assumption being that no one wants to automate purging their Inbox. Mail is acting as if I want to delete message in my Inbox that are one month old. ‘Net searches show other Mail users have the same issue.
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John Stires
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Why Would Mail Purge My Inbox Monthly?
Comments: 5 Responses to “Why Would Mail Purge My Inbox Monthly?”
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So it sounds like this is a limitation of your email server. The solution would then be to change email servers. Not sure what service you are using now, but certainly it wouldn't be a problem on iCloud or Gmail.
ISP swears it's not them. It happened spontaneously about 3 months ago. I cherish my email name and assume iCloud or Gmail couldn't use it.
"jsmith at smith dot com"... means a lot to me.
You own your email domain name, right? So you can take it with you anywhere. You can even use it with Gmail. Takes some tech savvy, but you can do it. I use Gmail with my own domain name and so do many others.
After screaming at my ISP I was nonchalantly told, "Oh, we only keep them on the IMAP server for 30 days." Apparently the bonehead techs I was dealing with didn't have a clue and gave me the exact opposite info. They NOW said to use POP and keep messages on my computer. Would you explain the difference & benefits between the 2 protocols? Thank you.
IMAP is a modern email system where you use email like a cloud service. It allows you to easily check your email from multiple devices (computer, phone, tablet, etc) and supports modern email features.
POP is old-fashioned email from the 1980s. It does NOT support multiple devices, though you can work-around that. But you shouldn't have to.
That ISP of yours should be ashamed of themselves for telling you to use POP. I'm appalled that they suggested it. They obviously have no idea what they are doing if they think that is a solution to your problem.
See:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Message_Access_Protocol#Advantages_over_POP