No Recipients. No Subject (blank email in Mail drafts)

[DaveWT]

Recently I have been finding a lot of items in my drafts folder. When I look at them they show the following:


Not sure what is causing this new behaviour. I don't think my actions have changed, but this recent example was after I composed and successfully sent an email to a friend.

M2 Mac Mini, Sonoma 14.5, Mail 16.0

 

[DaveWT]

Certainly not a result of any activity of mine! I was sound asleep when these occurred.

 

[chas_m]

Weird! Perhaps make sure your email program is closed and the computer shut down before sleeping.

If it happens again under those circumstances, I’d change your password for whoever provides your email service, just as a precaution.

 

[DaveWT]

It continues from time to time. Not sure since the latest macOS update. Also sometime is drafts On My Mac and sometimes in drafts in iCloud.
Sometimes the flag will say there are 2 but when I go into drafts there is only 1 and sometimes I have the feeling if I ignore these, some get deleted over time.

When you say "...the computer shut down before sleeping" you must mean "me sleeping" rather than the Mac sleeping because if the computer is shut down, it won't be sleeping.

Apple provides my email service ...@icloud.com ...@mac.com ...@me.com

I am now feeling that some of these occur at the same time I have just successfully sent an email. i.e. I will compose a new email to someone, hit send and off it goes. A few minutes later I find one of these things in drafts with a time stamp about the same time as I sent that email. I will continue to monitor since I am not completely sure it has happened since updating to 14.6

 

[chas_m]

It MIGHT be that you are opening a new email, but then not typing in an address or text in the composition area fast enough.*

This would create a blank draft like you are talking about, but then once you compose (and presumably send) the email, that gets sent and the blank draft stays behind.

*WRITE FASTER!!

I am making the assumption that you are using Apple's Mail app rather than some other program. If you are using IMAP to sync your email accounts with the provider's email server, your drafts will be "saved" almost instantly (a second or two at most). You might try changing how often it syncs from "automatically" to, let's say, 5 minutes. See if that makes a difference.

 

[DaveWT]

Thanks for the suggestions, Chas. This issue seems to have stopped just as mysteriously as it had started. I haven't noticed this in the last couple of weeks, so hopefully it is behind me.