Mail crashes when trying to open Time Machine since upgrade to Catalina

Richard.... I believe you misunderstood my solution. You still can not "Enter Time Machine" while in the Mail App. Mine crashes there as well. My solution, which I got from someone else is to use "FINDER" starting from the Home Folder. Then navigate to the Mail Folders "IN FINDER" then restore the mail box folders you want. You need to read my complete instructions for some things to watch out for.

However, maybe this will not work for your Time Machine Backup if it is located on a Network Storage Device (NAS). Mine is located on a directly attached backup usb drive. If yours is on a network server it might not have the same level of folder structure. But maybe another option similar to what I did.

I completely agree Apple needs to address this. But I simply could not wait and I found a workaround that worked for me and wanted to share with others that require access to older emails.

I posted on another forum that I found a solution that worked for me. This required me to start my "Enter Time Machine" from Finder and not the Mail App.

In Finder /Users/your userid/Mail/V7 (probably V7) .....

You will see your Mailbox's as folders which are being backed up to Time Machine. You can grab these folders from the TM Backup and place them here - maybe after renaming the affected mail boxes first before starting. Also, should close MAIL before starting (after rename).

I was able to recover my emails with above.

I wish I could give the give credit for this solution to the person that I found it from but I can not find that post. Like everything I have learned on the Internet it is nice to pass it forward when I can.

FYI... I was successful in recovering my lost email from Time Machine by using the "actual" .MBOX file. Per the instructions in the link below.

In Finder Home Folder, choose Enter Time Machine from the Time Machine system menu and select the day in the past where the mailbox containing the missing email is available.

You then navigate to the ~/Library folder then the Mail Folder then "V7" - starts with V.

At this point you should be able to OPEN folders until you find the MBOX that you are looking for. Not hard.

You can select the MBOX (which can include multiple MBOX below it) and then RESTORE.

CAUTION: It will RESTORE to the current ~Library location where you may already have that folder name. I choose to rename my current mail boxes (that will be restored) in Mac Mail first so that I would not create duplicates.

I then moved the restored MBOX files to a safe location.

I then renamed my current mail boxes back to the real mail box names.

Then you do a IMPORT MAILBOX from the restored MBOX files which are put in your "on the mac" location in Mail under the folder name of Import. You can then easy move the mail messages them to the correct folder.

https://www.macworld.com/article/3272250/how-to-recover-a-mail-folder-from-time-machine-in-macos.html

https://www.apple.com/contact/

Then start the online process, specify the kind of problem, etc. Keep following the prompts and they will offer to call you. Then an Apple tech tries to solve by phone, and after some troubleshooting (which will not work for this problem) - you are assigned a Case number. I email with my case # every few weeks for an update. Always the same - aware of and working on it. But the more complainers, the faster it gets fixed

I had the same issue as the OP and following your instructions here worked for me to recover and access the emails within Apple Mail, however there is an issue that anyone following these instructions should watch out for. I cannot seem to move any of the emails that have attachments out of the imported folder without losing them entirely.

For example, after importing the restored MBOX files via File --> Import Mailboxes an imported "On my Mac" folder is created. I also have my Gmail account active in the Mail app. I can move emails without attachments from the restored folder into my Gmail account and they upload as expected, however, if there is an attachment the email fails to move to the target Gmail folder but also removes itself from the original import folder. Once this happens the email can no longer be found anywhere.

I have also tried this with my outlook.com and iCloud accounts so it is not Gmail specific. With outlook.com I at least get an error (invalid base64 string for MIME content) but the same problem with the email not migrating and also being removed from the original folder occurs.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Reported it 12/30/19, so almost two months ago. EVERYONE who needs the functionality should open an Apple case. That is how fixes get prioritized.

I hear you! I've given up waiting for a fix from Apple. I now use Postbox as my email client. I figure if I'm not going to have an email program that works with Time Machine, I may as well have a better one than Apple gives us... and there are plenty of them out there.

I really like Postbox. It is solid as a rock and easy to use... although it has so many features it can take a while for you tweak it exactly as you want it.

(Apple should dump their Apple Mail app and buy this company and use Postbox instead!)

Yes, I have installed the latest update and "No" it hasn't solved this problem. I still can't use time machine to locate old emails. I am still hoping that soemone in Apple is going to come up with a solution.

Same problem here, I was hoping the latest update (10.15.2) would fix this problem but mail keeps crashing ...

d21mike's / macworld solution is to recover a Mail folder however, the problem is that mail just crashes when I start time machine.

@Apple: I (we) urgently need a solution for this problem !

Totally agree. It is very frustrating to not have access to time machine ... having this facility was a major factor in changing to Apple for work. Apple do need to address this problem and tell users when a fix is targeted for.

I have the same issue that began after Catalina was installed. I reported it to Apple, support collected a data file from my computer and referred the file to engineering. I am not aware of any work arounds.

Well good luck to you all. I really hope that Apple begins to respond the way they did years ago before Cook. I've moved on. Already bought my HP tower and have begun transferring everything including my email from my Mac 27. 18 years was a good run with Apple but times have changed under this leadership.

Thanks for that tip. As for me, last week I gave up on Apple Mail and bought the Postbox mail program. I'm not sure if I can get individual emails from it via Time Machine but if not, I can live without it. In all the years of using macOS, I think only twice I had to find an important email.