Lost mail in OS Catalina upgrade

At first just the headers showed up and the body of the email was blank, When I tried to rebuild only a very small number of them returned the rest went "POOF!" Gone. I've tried importing from the library.mail but they're not there. Seriously any help out there? Bot on POP account and IMAP.

There is a neqw Catalina update (10.15.1), however in the release notes it has not been mentioned whether upgrading to Catalina leaves all emails intact now. (read also https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/psa-apple-mail-bugs-can-lead-to-data-loss-in-macos-catalina.2205346/) Has Catalina 10.15.1 resolved this? This is the reason I'm still waiting to upgrade to Cat...

After my install experience, Apple support called me to try and resolve the issue. They are patient and very good. Outcome, the emails are gone. But it's not all Apple's fault. This is just based on my experience. If you have a lot of emails the Catalina install can take a very long time. and these is no clock to give you an estimate. This is because it's migrating the email. In my case based semi faulty information I just hit restart in middle of the process. Therefore the emails were gone.

I can't state strongly enough the you must backup before you do any OS install. As for Catalina not great. and 10.15.1. tried to fix things under the hood but its not enough.

Apple (a nice guy that called me from Austin, Texas, after my post on this discussion thread) is unsure if the update addresses the specific mail issue I encountered. And in the main improvements and fixes with this update, there is no mention of the mail issue. He advises me to have an up to date TimeMachine backup if I decide to upgrade to macOS 10.15.1.

I prefer to stay with Mojave and wait for a definitive and reassuring answer.

I think that this issue could be a time bomb: when users ‘ll need to restore their system from TimeMachine, and if they have pop mail accounts, they could be profoundly impacted if e-mails are lost.

Wait and see...

Hi - Yes, my emails were perfectly restored from my last Mojave backup. But with a lack of 5-6 days during which I used Catalina. I recovered these lost emails from my second Mac, by taking and copying individually all emails in an Out and In folders that I imported.

Same problem here, emails vanished or blanked after clean install of 10.15.1 and profile restoring from time machine back up. After clean install/ downgrade to 10.14.6 everything could be recovered from the same time machine back up.

somewhere on the Internet some guy wrote that he managed the problem by restoring mailboxes from his third party backup. Actually I didn’t quite understand how he did that. I found a function in catalina’s mail app „Postfach wiederherstellen“ that would translate to restore account, but actually all that it did was to delete the emails, I was never asked to locate the back up to be restored.

I solved the problem by switching to Outlook for MAC. If Apple cannot protect its own native mail server, what good are they? ALL emails should automatically back up to the iCloud, not just iCloud emails. What good is 2TB of storage, for what, Photos?

I was thinking, that my loss of about 50,000 e-mail's content, when upgrading from Mojave v10.14.6+Supp. Upd. 2019-001, to Catalina v10.5.1 , and the subsequent Apple Mail failures, MAY be the result of my disabling the hyper-threading feature, of my CPUs, but this is just a guess .

I had already HAD the hyper-threading feature, disabled, in Mojave, to guard-against the "Meltdown", "Spectre"-variants, "ZombieLoad", and "SWAPGS", CPU-hardware-flaw-threats, but found, that SOME applications, in rare-cases, did not perform, well, with the hyper-threading feature, disabled . You can tell, if the hyper-threading-feature is enabled, or disabled, by cranking-up the "System Information" Utility, and clicking upon the "Hardware"-heading, on the left, and looking at the readout, in the main portion of the window .

I may wait, until the Catalina v10.15.2 update, comes-out, and see if it restores the e-mail, -or-, I may try to re-enable the hyper-threading, and see if I can restore my Apple Mail contents by running Apple Mail, & Time Machine, simultaneously (THAT combination, consistently crashes, currently) .

Yes -- they noted the case, but I doubt, if my informed-speculations, were passed-on, to Apple Engineering .

Only one Apple Senior Advisor, was able to suggest, that I "Export" my POP e-mail folders, to the Desktop, and THEN restore my e-mails, by running Apple Mail, and then, from the Apple Mail window, activate Time Machine, simultaneously, but THAT, consistently crashed, BUT NOT, before I was partial-second, presented, with a "Restore"-option, in Time Machine, so THAT, at least, was somewhat on the right track .

The problem, has STILL not been fixed .

I also lost lots of emails when I migrated (Migration Assistant) from a 2011 MBP running High Sierra to a new MBP, preinstalled with Catalina 10.15.1. I guess the emails are still on my crash-prone 2011 MBP, but not sure there's a viable way of restoring from there. Tried rebuilding some of the mailboxes, but so far without success.

Ken Nellis,

try to install Mojave to your new MBP, then migrate from the old one. That is more or less what i did. (me: TM backup within 10.14.6, then clean install 10.15.1(via usb stick), restored profiles from TM, but emails were blanked; then clean install 10.14.6, restoring from that same TMbackup, everything fine.)

Thanx, MacPear, for your advice, and it may in fact work, but that is simply too much work for me. As it is, I was able to export the mailboxes from the old Mac, so hoping to import to the new one. ―Ken

MacPear, I haven't done the import yet, but the exported files only contain the raw mail messages—you can view them with TextEdit—so there is no account settings or login information that could be imported. ―Ken

I had the same problem. I found all my lost mails in a hidden folder on my MacBook. Try the following: Show all hidden files. (See hidden files on Mac via Finder: 1.) In Finder, open up your Macintosh HD folder. 2.) Press Command+Shift+Dot.

Your hidden files will become visible. Repeat step 2 to hide them again!)

Then go to: Macintosh HD/Users/your-username/Library/Mail/

Here I found all accounts and every single mail. (.emlx files)

I did a copy of all the Data but didn't try to reimport it to my Mail application. I am glad to have the files again. Maybe this is helpful for you too.

Hello,

> I did a copy of all the Data but didn't try to reimport it to my Mail application.

So you copied your date elsewhere and don't have the emails any longer in Mail?

If yes this wouldn't be a solution for me.

(I still haven't upgraded to Catalina. Still worried because of this issue!)