Apple Mail- How do I delete folder "com.apple.mail.backup"?

I needed to recover some mail items that had been deleted so I used Time Machine to do so. The process created a folder called "com.apple.mail.backup" (and a couple of sub-folders under it because I did it twice) in Mail and I've tried to delete them but I can't. It seems like it's going to because I get an "are you sure" type message but when I respond positively, nothing happens. I'm using Mail 10.3

That doesn't sound right. If you restored your mail using Time Machine, it should not have created a folder. How did you restore the mail items? Usually, if folders were created from a Time Machine restore it means the restore process was not done right. Which is why the folders are now locked.

@MartinLiss

The answer to Admin chscag' question about how you restored your "mail items" is crucial.

I can go into detail of how this should be done if it comes to that; but the key point is that restoration of anything from Time Machine has to be done via the TM icon in the Top Menu Bar of your Mac where you choose "enter Time Machine" and NOT via Finder > Devices > Time Machine.

If attempted the latter way, not only will the result be disappointing, but one runs the very real risk of rendering the TM backup unusable.

Ian

When I need to restore a file or files, I always run Time Machine by typing "Time Machine" in Spotlight, and selecting "Time Machine - Application" from the listed choices. In this case I had emptied my Mail Trash folder and then realizing that there were some emails there that I wanted to keep for documentation purposes, I...

1. Went to Mail
2. Selected the Trash folder
3. Opened Time Machine as described
4. Selected the backup for the previous day
5. Selected the files I wanted to restore
6. Clicked Restore

When I did that it created the com.apple.mail.backup folder in my Mail app with a sub-folder called "Recovered Messages". I didn't realize at first that it had done that so I did it again and wound up with a second sub-folder called "Recovered Messages-1". When I saw the results I "Moved" the message from "Recovered Messages" to "Trash".

I did some searching and found other people with the same problem. A solution that worked was to use Finder to...

1. Go to Library/Mail/V4
2. Delete the com.apple.mail.backup folder found there
3. Quit and restart Mail
4. Delete the com.apple.mail.backup folder from mail

Good of you to post back exactly what you did. Fine.

So, after your two posts, are you saying "problem solved?"

Ian

Yes, problem solved.

Well done, you.

Ian