I was looking for an old email confirmation from 2 or 3 years ago of a purchase and eMC failed to find several related emails in ‘seach all folders’. I was certain I hadn’t deleted any of that sort of email in the past so I put the exact same search term into my Protonmail web client. It found 9 relevant emails. Taking the details of the Protonmail emails I then manually searched for them in eMC. I could find not a single one. What could be the cause of eMC not downloading some files from the Protonmail server? eMC appears to be functioning normally in all other respects.
See Gary’s post from the following thread
@Gary post.
“If the search is not working, maybe you have not selected the correct fields and folders to search in”.
“Click the down-arrow in the search box and choose the most inclusive options”.
“Also untick the server search option, as your server may not be returning any results. Then try the search again”.
Thanks but the search is working. It was finding just one
I wrote my post badly, sorry Gary. The search works OK, it found one hit. The problem is that the other 9 emails that Protonmail web found are not even in the eMC database so not surprising search didn’t find them. The problem is that Inbox on eMC is missing many, many emails which are present on the Proton server and shown in Protonmail web. My question is why is eMC failing to sync all these missing emails? How can I force a sync which will find and download them?
The search works OK, it found one hit. The problem is that the other 9 emails that Protonmail web found are not even in the eMC database so not surprising search didn’t find them.
If eM Client Inbox is still missing emails “that are only showing in your IMAP server inbox online”, then it’s at some point got out of sync.
There are usually 3 fixes for that issue
1). If you have been doing regular eM Client backups either automatically in eM Client settings or manually via the Menu, then you could try “Restoring a recent backup when those emails were showing”, and eM Client will then sync all new emails & changes since that time.
2). If restoring a recent backup didn’t work or you haven’t been making regular backups, then you can try “Repairing your IMAP Inbox”. That clears the local account cache completely in eM Client and resyncs your online inbox to your local eM Client inbox. Be aware the emails will take time to reread till fully cached again.
To repair your IMAP Inbox, “Right click on your Acct Inbox” and then click “Properties” at the bottom. Then click the “Repair tab” at the top and lastly click “Repair”. In the case of Gmail, you right click on “All Mail” rather than Inbox.
3). Lastly if the Repair doesn’t fix it, then you would have to remove and re-add your IMAP account via either the automatic email wizard or manual setup via the “Add / mail / other” option depending on if your server supports IMAP OAuth token setup.
Thanks for that. I do have backups but none go back far enough, unfortunately. I ran repair to no avail. Similarly, deleting the account and starting again didn’t help. There is something odd going on somewhere, perhaps on the Proton side. eMC reports my inbox contains just over 10000 emails. Protonmail web indicates Inbox contains just over 22000. As a test I installed Thunderbird 115x and the inbox there reports just over 18000 emails in its inbox. I’m baffled.
EDIT: I looked again at the eMC Inbox. Right clicking on Inbox and going to Properties shows an identical figure for total emails as Thunderbird reports. Both are reporting just over 4000 emails less than the Proton server.
The reason for the difference between eM Client and Thunderbird is because you are using conversations in eM Client. So 18k messages in 10k conversations. You can disable conversations using Menu > View > Conversations > Disable Conversations.
eM Client doesn’t connect to the Protonmail server. Rather it connects to the Bridge you have installed on your device. It is possible that the Bridge is not receiving all messages from the server, so what you see in a direct connection to the server using webmail, might be different to what you see in the applications connecting to the Bridge. It is also possible there is some other error with the Bridge, so not all messages are being offered to eM Client and Thunderbird even though they may be in the Bridge.
Understood, Gary. Thanks for the info.
I was about to contact Protonmail support team but with this info I’ll change to the Bridge team. Thanks again.
Proton support got back to me and told me to open Bridge and delete my Protonmail account entry and re-enter it. This worked for me and my eMC Inbox email tally now coincides with that of the Proton server. The emails I was earlier searching for are now present in my eMC database.
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