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I always keep copies of all my sent emails in Mail.app from OS X Lion, at least since April 2010 (before I used Thunderbird). Today I was looking for some email I sent in September 2010 to some friend (I was sure about this, was about his birthday) but found nothing. Indeed, all email sent before December 2010 does not appear anymore in the "sent" folder.

I also remember in the last weeks, this old email on the "sent" folder, the subject was shown but could never read again the email message body.

Amy hints?

PS: I remember some of the things that I have been activating lastly were "show messages by conversation" and sometimes I rebuild some of the folders

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Are you using POP3 or IMAP? If it's the latter, your server may not be displaying older sent items. – Randolph West Dec 7 '11 at 1:23
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it is POP3 and not IMAP – flow Dec 7 '11 at 9:47
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There’s an option in Mail to remove old sent messages (Preferences>Accounts>your account>Behaviors>Sent>Delete sent mail after). Make sure you haven't set this option. I’m using Leopard, this option may be somewhere else in Lion.

I’m afraid your emails are permanently lost.

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no, I knew that and the option was checked "never remove" – flow Dec 9 '11 at 18:49
i think that has nothing to do. all sent email was stored locally, never on my email's provider webmail (perhaps unfortunately) – flow Dec 10 '11 at 2:11
Ah! I didn't read that you are using POP. – kinokijuf Dec 10 '11 at 14:08
nobody really answered this question, how should I give the bounty? – flow Dec 15 '11 at 14:54
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