Mac Mail: Help Restoring Emails From Time Machine.

Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
497
Reaction score
12
Points
18
Location
Camp Hill, Pa
Your Mac's Specs
15in MBP - 27in iMac - iPhone
I don't know what happened but one second I'm reading my new emails, I start surfing some website then return to my mail and everything is GONE. I thought the app crashed so I closed it and opened it back. I logon to my Gmail webmail and that inbox is empty as well. :Shouting: I have 5 email accounts, the folders are still there but the inbox is empty. I went to the deleted/trash folder and it only has a portion of my emails.

I figured since I use Time Machine I can just restore the mail app files. I restored User>Library>Mail as well as User>Library>Preferences>com.apple.mail.plist.
I thought this was going to work, all the messages were there but once they connected to the server, it deleted the messages.

I'm not sure what to do next. I've tried searching but came seem to come up with anything like this. Any help is appreciated.

In Gmail, I can click on "All Mail" and see about 1400 messages

Details:
1 Gmail account
1 Comcast pop3 account
1 Me.com account
2 Personal domain pop3 email accounts.

iMac
OSX 10.7.2
2TB Time Capsule (latest back up was about 2 hours ago.)
 
OP
TomTomTuning
Joined
Sep 26, 2008
Messages
497
Reaction score
12
Points
18
Location
Camp Hill, Pa
Your Mac's Specs
15in MBP - 27in iMac - iPhone
I may or may not have fixed it.

While Mail.app was opened, I loaded Time Machine.
Went to the most recent backup, selected one of the inbox folders and restored it.
It showed up in the mail.app as ON MY MAC>Time Machine>INBOX.
I then selected all of the messages and moved them to the appropriate Inbox.
It's transferring the messages and in the mean time I checked the webmail and the messages are there. :)

Now I just have to try this with the other 4.
 
C

chas_m

Guest
You fixed it before anyone could follow up!

Thanks for posting, glad to hear it's working out.
 

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