Email messages lost, missing, disappeared, or blank in Catalina (macOS 10.15)
Several people have reported lost or blank e-mail messages after updating macOS to Catalina. I lost 50,000 messages. Here's my solution, which requires a back-up of messages made before the Catalina update.
- Restore the folder V6 from User/Library/Mail to the desktop.
- Open Mail if it is not already open.
- Create a new mailbox where you will put recovered messages so that you can review them before storing them with other messages.
- Select the command "File" - "Import Mailboxes … ", then select "Apple Mail" as the format.
- Look in the folder V6 on your desktop for a mailbox that you want to restore, select it, then click "Continue". The import will start. A message will tell you when the import is done.
- After the messages have been imported, the messages will be in a new mailbox called "Import". Within that folder, they will be either in the simple folder structure that you would expect or in a multi-level folder hierarchy. If they are in a simple folder structure, click on a message in the message list, press command-A to select all the messages, and drag them to the folder that you created in step 3. If they are in a multi-level hierarchy, option-click on the triangle next to the folder called "Import" to expand the hierarchy. Command-click on all folders named "Messages". Click on one of the messages in the message list. Press command-A to select all messages in the message list. Click and drag the messages to the new mailbox that you created in step 3.
- Progress in moving the messages will be shown at the bottom of the folder list. After all the messages have been moved, delete the "Import" folder by right-clicking on it and selecting "Delete Mailbox … "
- Repeat steps 3 to 7 for other mailboxes.
Methods that did not work for me:
- Deleting envelope files in folder V7 and forcing Mail to re-index V7 messages.
- Temporarily removing folder V7 and forcing Mail to re-convert messages from folder V6.
- Restoring a Time Machine back-up from within Mail. Mail crashes.
iMac Line (2012 and Later)