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- Apr 12, 2009
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- Your Mac's Specs
- MacBook 2.4 GHz, 2 Gb, Leopard 10.5.6
Hi all,
I'm new to this forum, so be gentle! Apologies if I've given too much detail here, but wanted to be thorough.
I'm currently on leave, and so I didn't want to check my work email (I use Mail.app 3.5 on Leopard 10.5.6). I had put my work accounts offline, but they came back online this morning (because I'd switched off my wireless router, and when I turned it back on, and clicked on "Check Mail" all the accounts came back online - I was checking my personal email account)
Anyhoo, I then wanted to move all these emails to a Mailbox so I could look at it later, but not have it in my inbox. I created a folder (let's call it "Work/Gmail"), but did not realize this would create folders this way (I can understand it now, but didn't realise when I did it):
ON MY MAC
No issues, there, except that I also already had a folder called "Work", with many folders below it, and when it created the new one, it added the same folders as were in my already existing mailbox:
ON MY MAC
The subfolders created in the new mailbox were all empty (ie no email messages in them).
Obviously, I didn't want this double up of folders, so wanted to delete the ones under my new mailbox (which I had renamed at this point to "New Work Mail"). I highlighted the folders and was going to delete them, but received the warning message that it was undoable, and, out of concern for losing my existing work emails, stopped (I was suspicious that there might have been confusion because the mailbox already existed under the same name ("Work", but this was not my intention). As a test, I deleted one of the folders in the new mailbox (let's say I deleted "Sub-subfolder 3a"), because the emails in there weren't vital.
It deleted the folder from the new work mailbox, but left the old one, so I thought "great, I can delete them all, no worries". When I did, though, all the emails and folders from the existing mailbox were also deleted!
Now (and I know I'm gonna get grief for this), I don't have a backup I can restore from (am in the process of getting a backup drive, which I will be doing with great urgency now...!). Is there any way of getting these emails back? As you've hopefully seen, this is not an "I accidentally deleted my email out of stupidity" issue - I tried to do things as carefully as I could, but was bitten nonetheless. I don't quite understand why these mailbox/folders can't just go in the trash when they're deleted from Mail... but it is what it is.
Any help would be great!!! I've got a couple of file recovery programs (FileSalvage and VirtualLab Data Recovery) which are buzzing away at the moment, just in case I need to get the files back that way. These are both demo versions, though, and I'd prefer not to have to spend $ if I can avoid it.
Thanks
Nathan
I'm new to this forum, so be gentle! Apologies if I've given too much detail here, but wanted to be thorough.
I'm currently on leave, and so I didn't want to check my work email (I use Mail.app 3.5 on Leopard 10.5.6). I had put my work accounts offline, but they came back online this morning (because I'd switched off my wireless router, and when I turned it back on, and clicked on "Check Mail" all the accounts came back online - I was checking my personal email account)
Anyhoo, I then wanted to move all these emails to a Mailbox so I could look at it later, but not have it in my inbox. I created a folder (let's call it "Work/Gmail"), but did not realize this would create folders this way (I can understand it now, but didn't realise when I did it):
ON MY MAC
Work (main mailbox - was white in colour)
- Gmail (sub folder - was blue in colour)
No issues, there, except that I also already had a folder called "Work", with many folders below it, and when it created the new one, it added the same folders as were in my already existing mailbox:
ON MY MAC
Work (new mailbox)
- Gmail
- Subfolder 1 (from existing mailbox)
- Subfolder 2 (from existing mailbox)
- Subfolder 3 (from existing mailbox)
Sub-subfolder 3a (from existing mailbox)
Work (existing mailbox)
- Subfolder 1 (from existing mailbox)
- Subfolder 2 (from existing mailbox)
- Subfolder 3 (from existing mailbox)
Sub-subfolder 3a (from existing mailbox)
The subfolders created in the new mailbox were all empty (ie no email messages in them).
Obviously, I didn't want this double up of folders, so wanted to delete the ones under my new mailbox (which I had renamed at this point to "New Work Mail"). I highlighted the folders and was going to delete them, but received the warning message that it was undoable, and, out of concern for losing my existing work emails, stopped (I was suspicious that there might have been confusion because the mailbox already existed under the same name ("Work", but this was not my intention). As a test, I deleted one of the folders in the new mailbox (let's say I deleted "Sub-subfolder 3a"), because the emails in there weren't vital.
It deleted the folder from the new work mailbox, but left the old one, so I thought "great, I can delete them all, no worries". When I did, though, all the emails and folders from the existing mailbox were also deleted!
Now (and I know I'm gonna get grief for this), I don't have a backup I can restore from (am in the process of getting a backup drive, which I will be doing with great urgency now...!). Is there any way of getting these emails back? As you've hopefully seen, this is not an "I accidentally deleted my email out of stupidity" issue - I tried to do things as carefully as I could, but was bitten nonetheless. I don't quite understand why these mailbox/folders can't just go in the trash when they're deleted from Mail... but it is what it is.
Any help would be great!!! I've got a couple of file recovery programs (FileSalvage and VirtualLab Data Recovery) which are buzzing away at the moment, just in case I need to get the files back that way. These are both demo versions, though, and I'd prefer not to have to spend $ if I can avoid it.
Thanks
Nathan
