Dear Mail.app,

Dear Mail, why do you torment me so?

Why do you torment me so?  Just today all my Trash vanished, and you created three phantom Inboxes, in addition to my current Inbox.  Then you made a Trash folder located inside one of the fake Inboxes, and that Trash was empty.  My regular Trash seems to be gone, but when I relaunch Mail, you download 398 old messages and stuff them into the Phantom Trash.  Then, as if by magic, they all disappear. I also have an extraneous Trash located in my IMAP folders, but I am not allowed to delete that, even though it’s never in use, and serves no purpose. I can’t even rename it!

Why do you crash so?  Why do you create a new copy of my ToDo list, and then when I try to erase the duplicates, you then decide to erase all of them.  Why?  Why do you torment me with additional copies of “Drafts”, so that every time I Apple-S a draft, you create another copy. And when I send the final version of the email, I still have 26 copies of old drafts.  Woe is me, Dear Mail.  Please relent.

With admiration, respect, and pleading,

James

Wait a second

To Do: fix Mail

Dear Users,

If this happens to you (God forbid), then here’s the fix.  Your Trash may have vanished, but every time you erase a message, it sticks it into the Trash of a Phantom Inbox (colored Grey).  All you have to do is delete a message to call up the phantom Inboxes. Then, copy all the trash messages from the Bogus Trash to your actual  IMAP Trashcan.  Then, click “Synchonize IMAP” from the IMAP Trash’s contextual menu.  I am not sure if this is what helps it, but it certainly doesn’t hurt.  Everything should now run smoothly, and the Phantom Inboxes and bogus Trash should vanish. As for the IMAP Menu Trash that can’t be deleted, I have just learned to live with it.  

Loading trash from the beginning