Time Machine not restoring iCloud Sent Messages Mailbox

Need Help,

Trying to recover sent emails using time machine from my iCloud IMAP email account.

Time machine finds the Mail Folder and shows the sent messages from the recover date, but when I select all emails time machine restored them, but they are not in my Mail Sent iCloud Folder.

They did not get restored.

What is wrong? Where are they being restored?

Help,

Thanks

Restoring email from Time Machine backups is hit and miss even without iCloud being involved. I personally do not trust Time Machine for email recovery which is why I also use Carbon Copy Cloner to do daily backups of everything. Restoring from CCC works.

When you did the restore, did you direct everything back to their original folders? If the sent emails did not get restored to their original folder (Sent) and you can't find them, it's possible they were not backed up.

That is what is strange because Time Machine Sent iCloud emails were restored to the Sent icloud Mailbox in Mac Mail. Time machine showed each email processsing and restoring yet nothing got restored.

Attached is the screen shot from the Time Machine Mail folder showing the iCloud Mailboxes.

When selecting them it appears to work but nothing get restored.

Thanks

I used an app called Emailchemy (good inexpensive application) that let me use the Time Machine folders to recover the emails to a Folder. From the recoverd Folder I can import the emails into Mac Mail and move the emails into the correct Mail Boxes. It irritates me that Time Machine did not do this.

Somehow I lost all my iCloud sent emails from the Apple iCloud server.

That is why I needed to recover them.

I understand the frustration. That's why I will repeat the recommendation to use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper for your backups. Time Machine does very well for restoring most files and folders and even application data, but it does not do well at all when it comes to mail.

I used an app called Emailchemy (good inexpensive application) that let me use the Time Machine folders to recover the emails to a Folder. From the recoverd Folder I can import the emails into Mac Mail and move the emails into the correct Mail Boxes. It irritates me that Time Machine did not do this.

Click to expand...

Wow, good to read that Emailchemy.app still works and I'm quite surprised but shouldn't be as it was almost a must have app for many, especially back in Mac System 8/9 days if I recall correctly.

I won't bother adding yet another black mark to Time Machine, as it's already got too many for me to recommend it anyway, at least for serious backups. I also would suggest using Carbon Copy Coloner that I use, or maybe Super Duper, but I don't use it.



- Patrick
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So here is the latest. I was able to recover all the iCloud sent emails and import them into Mail, no issue.

However, when the iCloud Mac Mail Sent mail box synced with the iCloud server none of the sent dates got properly synced.

The Sent date for synced sent email are the yesterday's date, the day they were re-synced back into iCloud.

So all the sent dates are wrong on the Apple iCloud server.

Probably no fix for this!

Comments

I need to apologize to apple and the forum. Time Machine did restore the sent email. For some reason I did not see the restored Backup Folder (com.apple.Mail.Backup/Recovered Messages).

However when syncing back to the iCloud Server none of the sent dates got properly synced.

Sorry about that?