Where to Find Mailboxes in My Backup

[ekkojelly7]

I did a nuke and pave install of Catalina from Sierra. The only items I'm missing are the old mailboxes from my Mac Mail. The Inbox, Trash, Sent and Drafts came over but not the mailboxes. Where would those be located on my backup USB drive?

 

[chscag]

Try this:

Open Mail then:

Use your mouse cursor and move it slowly across from the word "mailboxes" and look for a small + or - sign to appear. Click on that to see if your mailboxes magically appear.

 

[Slydude]

Good thought Charlie. I didn't think of that.

@ekkojelly7 If Charlie's idea doesn't work let us know how you transferred data from the old setup to the new one?

Here's how it's done from a Time Machine backup.

 

[ekkojelly7]

No magic, but I did get this:

Try this:

Open Mail then:

Use your mouse cursor and move it slowly across from the word "mailboxes" and look for a small + or - sign to appear. Click on that to see if your mailboxes magically appear.

 

[chscag]

Okay.....

Now, go down a bit further until you come to "On My Mac". and do the same thing. A small plus or minus sign will appear. Try clicking on that and let us know....

 

[ekkojelly7]

Okay.....

Now, go down a bit further until you come to "On My Mac". and do the same thing. A small plus or minus sign will appear. Try clicking on that and let us know....

I think I know where you're going but sadly, there is no "On My Mac".

 

[ekkojelly7]

If I try to bring over Mac Mail from the backup I get a notification "Mail doesn't work with this version of macOS."

 

[chscag]

What kind of backup do you have? If it's Time Machine, let us know and we can show you how to restore the mailboxes from there.

 

[MacInWin]

Mail is the app, and it is OS version specific, so you have to use the Mail that came with Catalina. What you want is to get the messages and folders from that old version of Mail into the Catalina version of Mail.

And instead of the + or - chscag pointed to, it's the word "hide" or "show" that makes the mailboxes appear or disappear. The + and - add and delete mailboxes, as you found out.

 

[ekkojelly7]

Yep, Time Machine. My first post shows the backup from April 30, 4 or 5 days before I did the Catalina install.

What kind of backup do you have? If it's Time Machine, let us know and we can show you how to restore the mailboxes from there.

 

[ekkojelly7]

So this is what the typical dated backup looks like. Can anyone identify the file that contains my Mailboxes?

 

[MacInWin]

Not how you restore Mail. Open Mail, then with it open, invoke Time Machine and you will enter the TM backups of Mail. It works a bit differently because Mail is actually a database of messages, not just a file/folder structure.

 

[ekkojelly7]

Not how you restore Mail. Open Mail, then with it open, invoke Time Machine and you will enter the TM backups of Mail. It works a bit differently because Mail is actually a database of messages, not just a file/folder structure.

Alright, when I do that Time Machine does open but I can't access any of the dated files. Nothing happens if I click on the files or the graduated dates on the right side of the monitor.

 

[ekkojelly7]

It seems like I'm pretty close, is there anything I can do to get me over this last (hopefully) hurdle?

 

[chscag]

It seems like I'm pretty close, is there anything I can do to get me over this last (hopefully) hurdle?

Probably not if the Time Machine backups you made were okay and not corrupt in any way. The instructions given by Jake is the exact procedure to use when trying to recover Mail and Mail Boxes.

 

[MacInWin]

I have noticed that sometimes TM takes a while to populate the history. You can see that a backup is there, but when you try to get to it, the Finder window is blank for a while until TM can track back through all of the links to the original files. I suspect the same could happen in Mail, particularly if you have a LOT of messages. So what I recommend is to open Mail, then TM and then wait a while to see if it will eventually show you the folders/messages in the backups. It shouldn't take hours, but maybe a lot of minutes.

 

[Slydude]

I didn't think of that Jake and I should have. It has happened to me a time or two.

 

[MacInWin]

Ah, Sly, I beed there and I dood that. That's the only reason I said it.

 

[Slydude]

Ah, Sly, I beed there and I dood that. That's the only reason I said it.

Unfortunately I've been there myself. In my case the stuff that I have lost has usually happened on drives where i wasn't using Time Machine for one reason or another.

 

[ekkojelly7]

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