Ever since downloading Catalina, every time I try to enter Time Machine with Mail selected both items crash

I have the same problem. With Apple support, they don't seem to be aware of it or pretend. She advised me to re-install Catalina but after what I read here it seems to make no sense. I have been able to recover my mails via the Import Mailboxes in the File menu. Hence I went to the Time Machine disk. that worked out well.

Recently I spoke with the Italian Apple support in order to have a case number .

They said I need to wait until a new upgrade has been realised . The engineers are working on.

It is a common problem so we need to wait there is nothing we can do or specific workoround.

This is the best of my knowledge .

Note that it does take a long time for movement to appear in the status bar when importing. Just be patient. I also thought at first that it didn't work. Has taken at least fifteen minutes. If it does not work out in the morning, you can always put emails back manually. Here is a useful link. https://www.macissues.com/2014/12/07/how-to-manually-restore-your-mail-folder-from-time-machine/

For those of us trying to retreive just one email rather than a whole mailbox. I wonder if the update 10.15.2 will fix the issue. As it states "Resolves an issue that may prevent using undo from retrieving deleted mail" I will test again in the morning once I can remember the email I was trying to recover months ago!

Apple this needs sorting. I have an important email that was deleted and I urgently need it back. This is a B A S I C fundamental feature of a backup and recovery solution. It is an embarrassment it does not work, worse still it crashes both apps!!!!

Please fix urgently.

Yes! We lost emails on a Catalina system and launching Time Machine crashes both apps - Mail and TM. Thankfully, I have a MBP with Mojave and some of the emails were still available via that TM backup.

Mail in Catalina is a mess. I hate it.

I can also report having a case of this. I have tried various troubleshooting, including running the process in safe mode, switching USB ports, and even running first aid on the disk. Checking the log files in the error report itself does not seem to produce anything of substance either.

I have exactly the same problem. Have spent ages on it. Tried safe boot/reboot etc repeatedly but it doesn't help. I was persuaded to instal Catalina but now regret it as have also lost access to all my MS Office (2011) apps purchased only 2 years ago, and now need to repurchase or subscribe. A rip off....

Thanks for sharing this.. I’ve wasted hours trying to sort it. Very poor of Apple to release Catalina with such a basic fault, and even worse not to tell us.: arrogant and incompetent. Guess we just have to wait..........

Even more poor giving that they had a problem with emails being deleted. So we don’t have a way to recover them at all.

Btw, thanks for sharing, let’s hope they fix it in one of these (lot of) updates.

B2STIAL. You hit the nail on the head. Not only is this an embarrassment that such a basic feature of Time Capsule does not work but they are deleting emails too. I dropped off the beta community as the beta Catalina ruined my large local photo library and it took me nearly a month to restore using a different mac. As I am not on the beta programme any longer, is any one else? If so has anyone noticed any release notes on recent beta releases that mention anything about Time Capsule and Mail?

I tried again this morning and the same issue still persists in 10.15.2. Both apps still crash. How can Apple not address this basic function? Even by changing the crash to a simple alert box such as "Individual mail messages can't be recovered at this time, click here for help on how to recover a full mail box" would be far more professional than leaving both apps to simply crash! Come on Apple sort this, you can do it, we have faith in you...

I updated to Catalina 10.15.2 weeks ago but still have the same problem with Mail crashing in Time Machine. Based on the number of online complaints, this problem is not confined to just one or two people. I'm amazed and very frustrated to think Apple have not done anything about it. I'm rapidly losing faith......

Today I update to 10.5.3 nothing change . What the **** . Why nobodies take care of this problem .

If someone as a work round could u please explain step by step. I very regret to update to bloody Catalina.

I had exactly the same experience, and feel exactly the same as you. It’s pathetic. I.m seriously thinking of going back to PC’s/Windows/Microsoft. Apple seems to have given up caring about it’s customers.