Help! Hit the K key in Apple Mail and lost an important email
January 22, 2015 11:42 AM Subscribe
This makes no sense to me, but I have lost a super important email I just received by accidentally hitting the "K" key while it was highlighted in my Apple Mail inbox.
It is my only copy of an important day-long interview for an academic job.
I have tried searching Mail by sender and subject, searching my computer for same including searching content, looking in Mail's trash folder.
The Finder's trash is empty. I am stumped, and worried. I really don't want to write back to say that I lost the email.
Where could it be??
The 'K' key, by itself, doesn't do anything when you have a message selected (except go to another message in the list that has a subject beginning with 'k', if there is one). It's not a hotkey per se.
If you are sure that you pressed 'K' without any modifiers (not Cmd-K), then I think you may have just shifted the view to a different message in the list? I'm not sure what else could have happened.
When just viewing a message in the Inbox, I actually can't get any K-key combination to affect the message permanently. The most serious thing I can do is navigate away from it.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:49 AM on January 22, 2015
If you are sure that you pressed 'K' without any modifiers (not Cmd-K), then I think you may have just shifted the view to a different message in the list? I'm not sure what else could have happened.
When just viewing a message in the Inbox, I actually can't get any K-key combination to affect the message permanently. The most serious thing I can do is navigate away from it.
posted by Kadin2048 at 11:49 AM on January 22, 2015
Response by poster: Thanks all! Editing because some more answers came in while I was writing.
Thanks for looking that up. I've actually reconfigured command-K to be "Send to Gmail Archive folder" and I MEANT to hit the Command key but didn't, and was sort of curious where I had sent it to -- until I couldn't find it. My deleted messages (trash) are not emptied, so I"m hoping it might be something else. But maybe not.
No Time Machine.
And that's so weird that K is not doing anything for you. It's actually the same for me. But this message disappeared into thin air. Arghh. Can't believe I can't even search for it by content...
posted by betsbillabong at 11:49 AM on January 22, 2015
Thanks for looking that up. I've actually reconfigured command-K to be "Send to Gmail Archive folder" and I MEANT to hit the Command key but didn't, and was sort of curious where I had sent it to -- until I couldn't find it. My deleted messages (trash) are not emptied, so I"m hoping it might be something else. But maybe not.
No Time Machine.
And that's so weird that K is not doing anything for you. It's actually the same for me. But this message disappeared into thin air. Arghh. Can't believe I can't even search for it by content...
posted by betsbillabong at 11:49 AM on January 22, 2015
I really don't want to write back to say that I lost the email.
Why? In my wide experience academics are perfectly used to inexplicable computer cockups. I find it hard to imagine--even if it's correspondence with the Chair or the chair of the hiring committee or whatever that a "you know, I received your email and somehow it's just disappeared--would you mind resending it" would count as any kind of significant "black mark" against you in the hiring process.
posted by yoink at 11:53 AM on January 22, 2015 [9 favorites]
Why? In my wide experience academics are perfectly used to inexplicable computer cockups. I find it hard to imagine--even if it's correspondence with the Chair or the chair of the hiring committee or whatever that a "you know, I received your email and somehow it's just disappeared--would you mind resending it" would count as any kind of significant "black mark" against you in the hiring process.
posted by yoink at 11:53 AM on January 22, 2015 [9 favorites]
Response by poster: Thanks, Yoink, that makes me feel better. It's a tech-related position, so maybe that's why I feel a bit embarrassed about it! But I guess I'll just write back.
posted by betsbillabong at 11:54 AM on January 22, 2015
posted by betsbillabong at 11:54 AM on January 22, 2015
Best answer: Unless the job is 'Microsoft Exchange System Administrator', it's perfectly okay for you to lose mail every once in a while.
posted by empath at 11:57 AM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by empath at 11:57 AM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
Have you tried quitting and relaunching Mail? I've seen this application do some weird things (particularly under Yosemite, if that's what you're running), and that usually clears it up.
posted by kimota at 12:04 PM on January 22, 2015
posted by kimota at 12:04 PM on January 22, 2015
Seconding snickerdoodle. Using my Gmail account in Apple Mail occasionally involves weird syncing issues where it forgets it's told me about a message, disappears it, and redownloads it later at an unexpected time, or randomly undeletes things, or any number of other bizarre behaviors. I would not be the least bit surprised if you just happened to hit K at the wrong moment when Mail/Gmail were coincidentally doing something screwy.
posted by dorque at 12:09 PM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
posted by dorque at 12:09 PM on January 22, 2015 [2 favorites]
Seconding Yoink. Don't overthink it -- we all are too fast with the delete key, or have fat fingers, or whatever sometimes. Just ask them to resend. It takes two seconds and no one will think about it past those two seconds.
posted by Dashy at 1:01 PM on January 22, 2015
posted by Dashy at 1:01 PM on January 22, 2015
Have you looked in the Spam folder? I had a couple of emails from one particular person decide that they were spam after I'd read them. I thought I was going mad.
posted by kjs4 at 2:00 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by kjs4 at 2:00 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Best answer: It's a tech-related position, so maybe that's why I feel a bit embarrassed about it
But you debugged the problem! That's a promising attribute in a tech-related position.
posted by maryr at 2:26 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
But you debugged the problem! That's a promising attribute in a tech-related position.
posted by maryr at 2:26 PM on January 22, 2015 [1 favorite]
Does your ISP have webmail? Log in and chances are good it'll still be sitting there, along with the last day or two of emails you've received.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 1:23 AM on January 23, 2015
posted by obiwanwasabi at 1:23 AM on January 23, 2015
Response by poster: Thanks, all! It never came back (I tried the ISP's webmail and that had its own set of issues - nothing came up at all!) but the good news is that there was some rescheduling done on their end and they sent me another schedule.
I'm sure it would have been fine to ask them to resend, but I'm kinda glad I didn't have to.
posted by betsbillabong at 11:50 AM on January 23, 2015
I'm sure it would have been fine to ask them to resend, but I'm kinda glad I didn't have to.
posted by betsbillabong at 11:50 AM on January 23, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by slater at 11:49 AM on January 22, 2015