New (used) mac, having problems with Mail, shared email account. Help please.

Hey guys,

I recently my mom a "new" computer - a 2013 model Macbook, up to date OS, etc. since her old 2008 model was obsolete and becoming a problem. While it has otherwise been good so far, there have been issues with her receiving mail through Apple Mail (Is that what it's called? I use Win7 so I'm not very familiar with OSX).

So here's the problem. My Mom and Dad share a Comcast email account. Dad uses Win7 like I do, and uses MS Outlook for email. No problems. However, it seems that if Mom opens up mail, she will see her new messages, but if Dad refreshes his inbox (which apparently has to be done manually, vs automatically for Apple Mail), suddenly all the messages on her computer disappear, and her inbox is now empty.

Not quite the same problem, but apparently on her old computer, sometimes my dad would receive messages, and they just wouldn't show up on her computer. Not all messages, just a few. Seems like it could be connected, but I don't know.

I don't know what to make of this, so I'm hoping someone here can make sense of this and offer a solution. If anyone needs more info or clarification, let me know.

Thanks in advance.

 

On Apple devices, you can set your email to imap and have only messages on the server show up in your mailbox. When they are deleted from the server they disappear from your Apple inbox.

The newest iterations of OSX really have a iOS feel to them including their mail app.

It sounds like your dad has MS Outlook set to delete messages on download which then causes them to no longer show up on your mom's computer.

I do the same with my devices and occasionally fetch and delete server side messages on my central PC to archive them under Thunderbird. It is the same system I used previously with Eudora till it went EOL. Once I download and delete my emails on my PC, it clears up my inboxes on my ipad, iphone, Macbook and Mac Pro.

 

Sometimes Mail on my Mac also acts up. If nothing else works, I have actually had to delete and re-create the account on my mac. Make sure to have a backup of your messages before attempting that!

Note that there are two places to check for problems, the first is in the Mail preferences, and the second is in System Preferences -> internet accounts. This is because accounts such as exchange or facebook are managed system-wide on macOS.

 

I solved this problem a little while ago. It was more or less what electrosoft suggested - a setting to have emails deleted from the server upon download. Only the setting wasn't in MS Outlook, it was under the email settings on Comcast's website. I changed the setting and haven't had a problem since.