How do I restore Mail after clean install?

[berlingoodman]

Hi all,

I recently had a defective hard dive replaced in my MacBook Pro and needed to do a clean install. To make a long story short, my Time Machine has also become defective so I wasn't able to restore my laptop using that. However, I was still able to manually move data from the Time Machine backup to my hard drive. A long and tedious process.

All my mails were stored in the Library folder and I've used 'Import Mailbox' to import them back in the Mail app. But they appear in these strange folders with lots of numbers. The Inboxes for the SMTP accounts that I use are all there, but not the sent or drafts folders. Those appear in the folders with the strange numbers. Also, all my outgoing mailbox settings are 'offline' so I can't send any outgoing mail. I always get the message that the certificate is invalid. I am able to receive mail though.

Basically, what I want is my Mail to be how it was before my hard drive died...same settings, same folders, everything.

Is there anyway I can restore it to how it was? Perhaps some hidden preferences file I don't know about lurking in my Time Machine?

Please help! It's super annoying having to redo all my mail settings and manually try and get my mail organized to how it was.

Thanks a lot!

 

[chscag]

Without a good Time Machine backup to use, your only hope is if you can restore mail from your ISP's server. Most ISPs delete mail after 30 days for an IMAP account. However, if your account was POP3 and you did not remove the mail from the server, it may still exist and may be possible to download again.

Trying to restore mail is difficult enough even when Time Machine is working, but trying to do it without a good Time Machine backup is almost impossible. As you found out, Mail is stored in data base format and makes no sense at all if you have no way to restore it. You can not restore mail manually.

In the future, do not rely only on one backup method. Most of us use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper in addition to Time Machine for backups.