Workflow Fails to Trigger after Period of Inactivity (IMAP Trigger)

[Team_QED]

Hi n8n Community,

I have a workflow set up in n8n that listens for incoming emails via an IMAP trigger. The workflow extracts the service name and invoice date from the email subject and body, renames any attached PDF invoices, and uploads them to Dropbox. However, I’ve encountered a recurring issue:

• The workflow seems to stop running after a period of inactivity (for example, if I send an email after a couple of weeks, the workflow doesn’t trigger).
• The issue resolves temporarily when I deactivate and then reactivate the workflow, and it works fine for a few hours after reactivation.
• I have verified that the IMAP trigger is configured correctly and that the workflow is active, but it fails to run until manually restarted.

Has anyone else experienced this problem with n8n workflows, specifically with the IMAP trigger? I’m wondering if there’s a setting or known issue that could explain this behavior. Any suggestions or insights would be appreciated!

Thanks in advance for your help!

[mrrobot]

Hey @Team_QED

Would this help ?

IMAP trigger skipping about 10% of the emails

Describe the problem/error/question The IMAP email trigger in my workflow is not reliably triggering for each and every email received in the inbox. About 10% of emails are being missed and this doesn’t seem to follow any precise pattern. It seems rather random. I’ve tried changing the “Force Reconnect Every Minutes” and set it to even 1 min but it didn’t help. What is the error message (if any)? No error messages received. Some emails received in the Gmail inbox are simply not triggering th…