Need to Restore Deleted Mail Folders

I accidentally deleted a large group of personal folders in Mail. What is the best process to use to recover them? I back up my MacBook Pro using Time Machine as well as an online service, but I am not sure how to find these specific files or if exactly what procedure to follow.

Open Mail, then invoke TM. That sequence should take you to the mail backups. From there you can restore your deleted emails.

With Mail open I click on the folder name I want to restore. Once inside TM, I see the Mail interface and TM denotes the name of the file I selected. I select a time period earlier today before the file deletion. I scroll down the list of Mail folders to the one I deleted. It is a large folder with many sub-folders, so I select the first sub-folder which only contains eight emails. After clicking Restore, all the TM folders retract to the real Mail screen. Here is where a problem occurs as I get variable results including 1) nothing happens, 2) a small dialog box appears stating Restoring files for "folder name" and nothing happens, and 3) the emails restored in the Mail column to the right of the Mailbox column. It took numerous attempts to finally receive restored emails.

Next, I went back to TM and repeated the above process for the next folder. Again, the "Restoring" dialog box flashed down from the top and quickly rose back up again and nothing happened. The file only has ten messages in it. I waited for a time to be sure TM had recovered all messages in the folder before clicking Restore. I waited several minutes for the messages to appear in Mail to no avail. I also tried selecting the sub-folder in Mail before going to TM, but it made no difference.

It worked once, so I believe it should work again, but evidently I am missing something. Any thoughts?

Why not just select the top folder, not the sub folders? I would think that would restore the whole thing. And restoration can take a while as TM has to assemble the mails for you. Bear in mind that the way TM stores backups while you may SEE them all together, the individual emails are stored in the backup where they FIRST appeared on the drive, so if you want to restore from a long time ago, TM has to track back through all the links to get to that original email. It can be a very lengthy process with you seeing very little progress as it goes. Patience is a real virtue in this.

BTW, if you want a demonstration of the process, open Mail, then TM. On the top bar of the mail window it will tell you where you are and how many messages it sees. If you change folders the location will change and the message count will increase, relatively slowly, as it parses through all the backups to determine what messages are in THAT folder at THAT backup.

I started out trying to restore the main folder and I watched the top bar as the message count increased. It topped out at 423 messages. I decided to try restoring one folder in order to test the process and see if and how it worked.

If I select the main folder to restore, what should I expect to see appear in Mail? Will it restore the file tree showing all the individual sub-folders with their contents intact or will it just produce one massive list of messages? Also, once I click Restore, should I leave the area for awhile and let things happen without interruption?

I firmly agree with your patience statement.

To be honest, I've never restored just mail. I've restored it as part of a total drive restore. So I don't have an answer for your question, sorry. I suspect it should restore the folders as they were before your deletion, including the sub-folder structure. But the top out at 423 may not be the top out. Give it a while to see if it does continue to increase. As I said, it can be slow. And once it gets to what you think is the right answer then start the restore and wait until it's done. It could be a very long time depending on the number of emails and the speed of your connection to the TM drive.

@Rick T:

As Jake advised, restore the entire folder from the top. Not only will that be faster in the long haul, there is a less likely chance of an error or accidental overwrite. Mail is probably the most tricky item to restore using Time Machine which is why I no longer attempt to use it that way. I find restoring from a cloned backup to be much easier. Of course if you need to go back further in time than your latest clone, then you have no other choice but to use Time Machine.

Here is the process I followed and the results. Open Mail, created a new folder of the same name (Ecommerce) as the one deleted, clicked on it, invoked Time Machine. TM opens with the cascading windows, in the front window it states "Click Restore to recover the mailbox "Ecommerce." (Note there are many sub-folders within the main folder "Ecommerce.") It is at this point I get varying results. Sometimes nothing happens, as in no file contents begin appearing in the front window regardless of how long I wait. Twice files began loading and toped out at 703. Once that number was reached I waited 15-20 minutes to be sure TM was finished. I clicked Restore, the TM windows dissolved into the normal Mail screen and a dialog box appeared stating Restoring mailbox Ecommerce. After about 10 seconds it disappears. Yesterday I waited three hours and nothing appeared. Today I waited seven hours with no results.

At the beginning of this process yesterday, I first tried to restore the main folder Ecommerce, but when I thought it was not working, I tried restoring a subfolder with only a few messages in it to test the process. TM found nine messages and restored them into Mail in the open column to the right of the mailbox column. I then recreated the appropriate file and dragged the messages into it.

I am at a loss to understand why TM can find 703 files, but cannot seem to push them into my laptop.

I can't explain what might have happened, however, there was no need to re-create the folder "Ecommerce" before attempting the restore from Time Machine. All that's required is to enter the Mail program and then enter Time Machine, select the "Ecommerce" folder from the TM backup and select restore. It should then ask where you wish to restore it to. I've done this before so I know it works.

I am evidently missing something because I do not seem to be able to do what you describe. I open Mail and all the mailboxes are listed in the left column. It defaults to the Inbox and you can see "Inbox" highlighted. I open TM. The window that opens representing Mail only shows the top five mailboxes, it does not show the complete list; therefore, there is no way to scroll down and select another mailbox such as Ecommerce.

Is this a matter of having to wait for TM to fill in the full list of mailboxes?

I answered my question shortly after making the above post. After opening Mail, opening TM, the mailbox listing eventually populated to the extent I could click through to the Ecommerce mailbox. (I neglected to mention previously, that I select a time period from the right hand timeline that precedes the time of the deletion.) The TM window once again began gathering messages from Ecommerce and its sub-folders. It topped out as it did before at 703. I clicked Restore, the cascading windows immediately retracted and resolved into the Mail window. The Mail window had the file tree in the left column, the middle and right columns were empty. I left the computer for four hours and nothing appeared in Mail. I waited another two hours and still nothing.

You mentioned that after selecting Restore "It should then ask where you wish to restore it to." That has never occurred in any of my attempts. When TM restored the files from the Ecommerce sub-folder I tested, it dropped the files into the middle column in Mail. In my Mail arrangement, that is the column where new emails populate.

I found the following information in a related thread. Is it something I should consider doing?

1. From the Finder Go Menu choose Go to Folder
2. Enter the following into the next sheet ~/Library/Mail/V2/
4. Look through the folders till you find the mbox folder for the account you want to restore
5. Launch Time Machine
6. The screen should not be in the same holder you just navigated to. Select the appropriate mbox and click Restore

I found the following information in a related thread. Is it something I should consider doing?

Click to expand...

Yes, go ahead and give that a try. You've nothing to lose if the restore fails. I will tell you that restoring the mbox folder doesn't always work and has failed for me on at least one occasion. Which is why I now use CCC on a daily basis.

Having spent a large part of my career in service, it was a given that after dispensing information to someone, it was unlikely to get a reply as to whether your information solved a problem, and if not, what did. With that in mind, I have returned to report what resolved my problem.

Having come to a dead end in my efforts, I went to the Genius Bar. Four techs could not figure out why we could extract the deleted folder from my Time Capsule, park it on my desktop, but could not find any way to get Mail to accept the file. Therefore, they applied their universal fix for all things not known... erase the OS, reload and restore. It worked.

So I thank you both for taking the time to provide your help. I always appreciate it.

Rick

Thanks for getting back to us. That was a drastic way to get your mail back but I'm glad to hear it worked. Now.. accept the suggestion from myself and Jake to set up a cloning schedule in addition to backing up using TM. Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper clone to an external drive on a daily basis in addition to Time Machine will prevent the type of problem you ran into. Also note that the clone backups are bootable. Very convenient.

I will indeed take the advice of setting up CCC and will get it done soon.

Rick T said:

Having spent a large part of my career in service, it was a given that after dispensing information to someone, it was unlikely to get a reply as to whether your information solved a problem, and if not, what did. With that in mind, I have returned to report what resolved my problem.

Having come to a dead end in my efforts, I went to the Genius Bar. Four techs could not figure out why we could extract the deleted folder from my Time Capsule, park it on my desktop, but could not find any way to get Mail to accept the file. Therefore, they applied their universal fix for all things not known... erase the OS, reload and restore. It worked.

So I thank you both for taking the time to provide your help. I always appreciate it.

Rick

Click to expand...

And thank you very much for posting back Rick T, I'm sure many would benefit more if others who just forgot did the same, but that word "soon" in your post above bothers me. It reminds me of some stubborn clients and their "Round'Tuits" and resulting lost forever files.

I and I'm sure others here would like to see something like "tomorrow"!!! Trust me, don't wait and you already just went through quite an ordeal and you don't need another such episode. Besides, it may not even work out as well next time.

chscag's suggestions would be an excellent suggestion.

I hesitated to write the word "soon" as I anticipated the reaction it provoked. I have a new 1 TB external drive sitting next to me. Since today is my birthday, I have been spending the past hour or more responding to Facebook well wishers. I will be gone most of the afternoon and evening, so it turns out that "tomorrow" will indeed be the day.

Happy Birthday!

Thank you, Jake. By the way, I have CCC running. Didn't want to wait for tomorrow.