Can't Find Mail Backup On TimeMachine

[Marrk]

as above

I'm trying to locate and restore e-mails from last month. When I open TimeMachine for any given backup, all I see is a window showing Desktop.

Thanks.

 

[MacInWin]

Try this: Open Mail, then enter Time Machine. I think that opens the Mail backups directly.

If that doesn't work, you will need to use the TM window and navigate to where the Mail files are stored to get them. That is a non-trivial task and has great potential for making things worse than having missing email messages.

EDIT: I just tried what I suggested and it did not work as I thought it would, so that's not good. One thing to look at is the Trash folders in Mail. If you haven't emptied the trash they may be there.

 

[Marrk]

Try this: Open Mail, then enter Time Machine. I think that opens the Mail backups directly.

This is what I did first thing. Didn't work.

 

[Jimmysb]

You need to know where the mail app stores the data, then in TM navigate to that folder and your mail will be there. Try User/<user name>/Library/Mail/ if you are using apple mail and search there.

 

[MacInWin]

You need to know where the mail app stores the data, then in TM navigate to that folder and your mail will be there. Try User/<user name>/Library/Mail/ if you are using apple mail and search there.

Just be careful if you restore from that location as it will restore ALL of the email files back to that date, which means more recent email messages will be removed and will have to be re-downloaded from the mail server, if they are still there. Restoring Mail messages is, as I said, tricky.

 

[Marrk]

You need to know where the mail app stores the data, then in TM navigate to that folder and your mail will be there. Try User/<user name>/Library/Mail/ if you are using apple mail and search there.

Already looked there. Strangely, there is no "Mail" under "Library."

 

[MacInWin]

There are multiple "Library" folders. Mail is in the specific directory Jimmysb gave you, namely
/Users/<your account>/Library/Mail. Not /Library, but the on in YOUR account area.

 

[Marrk]

There are multiple "Library" folders. Mail is in the specific directory Jimmysb gave you, namely
/Users/<your account>/Library/Mail. Not /Library, but the on in YOUR account area.

I clicked on every "Library" in the laptop. No "Mail" under any of them.

 

[MacInWin]

Try this:

Open Finder, on the top menu bar of the screen, click on "Go" and then "Go to folder..." to open a dialog box. In that dialog box type "~/Library" and press Return. Finder should open your LIbrary folder. In that you should see a folder for Mail. If you can't find it, open the Finder/Go/Go to Folder and enter "~/Library/Mail" and if it's there at all, it should open in Finder. What is there is kind of cryptic, as it's not intended for the casual user to mess with.

EDIT: Once you get to the Mail folder, open TM while Finder is there and the "Finder-like" presentation in TM will be in the same place. But remember, as I said, what is in that area is cryptic and the names are not what you would expect. For example, there may be a folder named "V10" with randomly named folder inside that. Here is my Mail folder, as an example:

Each of those subfolders of V10 have more folder nested in them, and they have even lower folders nexted in them. For example, I separate the email messages I get from this website into a separate folder in Mail, so I have this:

The actual messages are the ".emix" files, but any attachments to those messages are stored elsewhere, in a folder calle MailData. The naming of the emix files is sequential, as far as I can see, with the messages then stored in the 0, 1, 2, 3 folder and then in other numbered folders. All of that is to say that finding an actual single message to restore is going to take a lot of searching.

 

[ferrarr]

Are the email accounts from different providers? iCloud, hotmail, yahoo, or gmail?

 

[Jimmysb]

Are the email accounts from different providers? iCloud, hotmail, yahoo, or gmail?

Yes, each long string is a different account, whether the same provider or different providers.

 

[Marrk]

Try this:

Open Finder, on the top menu bar of the screen, click on "Go" and then "Go to folder..." to open a dialog box. In that dialog box type "~/Library" and press Return. Finder should open your LIbrary folder. In that you should see a folder for Mail. If you can't find it, open the Finder/Go/Go to Folder and enter "~/Library/Mail" and if it's there at all, it should open in Finder. What is there is kind of cryptic, as it's not intended for the casual user to mess with.

EDIT: Once you get to the Mail folder, open TM while Finder is there and the "Finder-like" presentation in TM will be in the same place. But remember, as I said, what is in that area is cryptic and the names are not what you would expect. For example, there may be a folder named "V10" with randomly named folder inside that. Here is my Mail folder, as an example:
View attachment 39569
Each of those subfolders of V10 have more folder nested in them, and they have even lower folders nexted in them. For example, I separate the email messages I get from this website into a separate folder in Mail, so I have this:
View attachment 39570
The actual messages are the ".emix" files, but any attachments to those messages are stored elsewhere, in a folder calle MailData. The naming of the emix files is sequential, as far as I can see, with the messages then stored in the 0, 1, 2, 3 folder and then in other numbered folders. All of that is to say that finding an actual single message to restore is going to take a lot of searching.

This works. My system gets me to a V9 folder, which has folders in it like yours. But as I click through the "nested folders," I ultimately get to nothing, just empty folders. Kind of strange.

 

[Jimmysb]

To read what is in the folders you will need to import them into your mail application.

 

[Rod]

As already demonstrated its a difficult task to restore email messages and it's important to know how they were lost in the first place.
For example if they were accidentally deleted, how they were deleted eg moved to trash, deleted within the app ect.
If they have simply disappeared due to a software or even hardware failure where it may be possible to retreive them at your email provider's web page, eg Apple Microsoft, Google ect.

 

[MacInWin]

Good point, Rod. It would help if we knew how these messages disappeared.

As far as restoration or importing, both are fraught with issues. Mail is a kind of database, where the actual body of the email message is saved as an ".emix" file, but all attachments, including all downoaded images in that message, are stored in the Attachments folder of the same subfolder. For example,look at this from my Mail setup:

As you can see, in the Data folder are subfolders "0," "4," and "2," which correspond to the first three digits of the .emix files in that folder. So "240000.emix" is an email I have received and which was assigned that number by Mail. Now look at this:

I have opened the "Attachments" folder in the same mailbox and there is a folder named "240039" that corresponds to 240039.emix and which holds two .jpg files that were attached to the email saved as "240039.emix." Mail knows to put the two attachments with the emix when it is opened in Mail. Now look at this:

I collapsed the "0" folder and now you can see that there ae actually ten subfolders of "Data," each one structured as in the first image in this post. And there are subfolders for the other categories like Drafts, Sent, Trash, etc., with the same structure as well.

So, to do a restore of any given message is, as i said, not trivial. To do so, one would have to first find the specific .emix file, then look to see if there is a folder with the attachments for that .emix file and get both of them back into Mail in the right place. I don't know if there is a central location within Mail that has a database of all of these files, but I suspect there is, so it won't do to simply copy them back into the right folder, the tracking of what goes with what needs to be updated as well.

Importing from a backup, as JimmyB suggested, will most likely NOT put the imported messages back into the original folders, but move them into new folders in Mail. I could be wrong, but I seem to remember that is what happened when I tried to restore some older email messages some time ago. But if that happens, and is acceptable to Marrk, it could be an option to at least recover the messages.