restore lost email files from roadrunner.com

My backup is Time Machine. How do I restore my emails from it?

Sam Autrey said:

My backup is Time Machine. How do I restore my emails from it?

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Hi Sam - welcome to the forum! You really need to provide more information that the terse question above as your first post: 1) What Mac are you using (i.e. model & year); 2) What OS X are you running; 3) Why do you need to restore your emails; and 4) Is your TM backup up to date (i.e. is it attached to your computer and running regularly)?

In the meantime, checkout the Time Machine Basics - so please provide the information above which will greatly help others respond more specifically. Good luck - Dave

I have an eight year old Mac Pro running OS 10.7.5, i.e. incapable of upgrades. I was running Thunderbird 11.0, mainly deleting emails from my Inbox. I don't know what I did to precipitate the action, but suddenly all of my [email protected] mail boxes emptied (inbox, drafts, sent, junk, and trash), as did my archives and Inbox filters. My local mail boxes were untouched, and I currently have no other accounts. I tried quitting Thunderbird, and restarting, and nothing had changed. Then I tried shutting down my Mac and restarting. It would not restart, and I was afraid that my hard drive had crashed. The next morning, it booted up fine, but Thunderbird was still missing all my [email protected] data. I have a second hard drive which is totally dedicated to Time Machine, but I have not been able to use it to restore my data. It's been seven days since this occurred, and Thunderbird is running normally, but I would still like to recover my data.

Hi Sam - thanks for the further explanation of your situation. I'm using Apple's Mail on our computers but used Thunderbird years ago on a Windows machine. Do you have Thunderbird setup as a POP3 or IMAP incoming mail client? Also, when you say all of your boxes from your RR account emptied - was that on your computer or on the RR website? Have you signed into the RR email site via a browser to see if your mailboxes are still there?

Time Machine (TM) will only restore data that is on your computer, so if RR mailboxes were on your computer then going back before the event occurred should restore those items; however, if you are saying that the mailboxes disappeared on the RR servers, then that is an issue you would have to discuss w/ them.

So, still not completely clear about the RR mailboxes - please explain further. Also, let us know if the TM link was clear to you? Dave

Hi Dave, I just returned from a weekend trip. TBird is set up as POP3 incoming mail client. All the boxes on my RR account on my computer were emptied. Turns out that I never saved email on the RR servers, so they were always empty. I have changed that now and they are currently being saved on RR. When I go back in TM to restore TBird to the day before the event, the email boxes themselves do not get restored, so they must not be stored in the TBird application. And yes, I have used TM before and think I know what I'm doing. sam

Sam Autrey said:

Hi Dave, I just returned from a weekend trip. TBird is set up as POP3 incoming mail client. All the boxes on my RR account on my computer were emptied. Turns out that I never saved email on the RR servers, so they were always empty. I have changed that now and they are currently being saved on RR. When I go back in TM to restore TBird to the day before the event, the email boxes themselves do not get restored, so they must not be stored in the TBird application. And yes, I have used TM before and think I know what I'm doing. sam

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Hi again Sam - yep, a standard POP3 account removes the mail from the server and puts in on your computer, so not surprised that the mailboxes were empty when going to RR; there is an option for POP3 to retain a copy of your messages or conversion to an IMAP account which simply sends you a copy of your emails.

Sorry about the TM restoration attempt - I cannot imagine the mailboxes not being there (unless excluded in TM's Preferences?) - not sure that I can take this much further - hopefully, a member will 'chime in' w/ some experience w/ Thunderbird (TB) on Mac OS - there is a Mozilla TB support community HERE which you may have already checked out? But keep us up to date if a solution occurs. My last thought if not already done is to 'log off' your account and then sign back it - has helped me in several 'funky' situations - probably will do no good, but also no harm. Good luck! Dave