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User profile for user: Tripteron
Tripteron Author
User level: Level 1
13 points

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.


  1. Restore the folder V6 from User/Library/Mail to the desktop.
  2. Open Mail if it is not already open.
  3. Create a new mailbox where you will put recovered messages so that you can review them before storing them with other messages.
  4. Select the command "File" - "Import Mailboxes  … ", then select "Apple Mail" as the format.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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  … "
  8. 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)

Posted on Dec 23, 2019 5:51 AM

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User profile for user: Ian Blavins
Ian Blavins
User level: Level 1
9 points

Posted on Jan 23, 2020 3:24 PM

G'day,


This solution worked for me. Even the attachments are preserved.


A couple of notes on the process described:


  • in the method described V6 may be V<something else>; the actual number depends on the particular version of the Mac OS you upgraded from; I upgraded from El Capitan so for me it was V3
  • when you are selecting mailboxes to recover you will see one or more entries of the form <Hex number>...<Hex number>; each of these is for a different e-mail account; if you had, say, 8 e-mail accounts in the system you upgraded from you will see 8 entries; you need to repeat the steps for each account
  • if you filed your e-mails in mail boxes you will probably find that all the mail boxes are attached to just one of the accounts regardless of the accounts that the enclosed e-mails initially arrived on; just keep on restoring accounts as above and in due course the mail boxes and filed e-mails will be restored; if, like me, you have scores or hundreds of mail boxes and thousands of e-mails the import of that account will take a while; be patient
  • the recovered mail boxes and e-mails will be placed in mailboxes with names of the form "Import", "Import - n"; you need to drill down several levels in these to reach the actual recovered mail boxes; but once there you can move the recovered mail boxes back up the hierarchy to the same level as "Import" and delete the now empty "Import"; doing this after each import makes the process cleaner
  • about the only thing that doesn't get recovered is the actual e-mail accounts; you need to re-add those manually; just as well you wrote down the passwords for them; when you add them inbound e-mails still on the server will be retrieved


A couple of notes on detecting if this has happened to you and possible alternative recovery options:


  • if, when you bring Mail up for the first time after the upgrade, you see a list of different kinds of e-mail accounts (Google, Yahoo etc) then you know this has happened to you and recovery is necessary


  • it may be possible to recover the messages by opening Mail and then opening TimeMachine; this is the first option that Apple support will offer; it didn't work for the owner of this thread and it didn't work for me - Mail crashes
  • the other options that Apple support offered were unappealing including

- restoring back to the version of Mac OS that you upgraded from and redoing the upgrade; I personally wasn't willing to try this one because of the time and effort, the risk, and my lack of any confidence that the upgrade would succeed second time around

- deleting and re-adding the user id; I wasn't prepared to try this one either



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User profile for user: Ian Blavins
Ian Blavins
User level: Level 1
9 points

Jan 23, 2020 3:24 PM in response to Tripteron

G'day,


This solution worked for me. Even the attachments are preserved.


A couple of notes on the process described:


  • in the method described V6 may be V<something else>; the actual number depends on the particular version of the Mac OS you upgraded from; I upgraded from El Capitan so for me it was V3
  • when you are selecting mailboxes to recover you will see one or more entries of the form <Hex number>...<Hex number>; each of these is for a different e-mail account; if you had, say, 8 e-mail accounts in the system you upgraded from you will see 8 entries; you need to repeat the steps for each account
  • if you filed your e-mails in mail boxes you will probably find that all the mail boxes are attached to just one of the accounts regardless of the accounts that the enclosed e-mails initially arrived on; just keep on restoring accounts as above and in due course the mail boxes and filed e-mails will be restored; if, like me, you have scores or hundreds of mail boxes and thousands of e-mails the import of that account will take a while; be patient
  • the recovered mail boxes and e-mails will be placed in mailboxes with names of the form "Import", "Import - n"; you need to drill down several levels in these to reach the actual recovered mail boxes; but once there you can move the recovered mail boxes back up the hierarchy to the same level as "Import" and delete the now empty "Import"; doing this after each import makes the process cleaner
  • about the only thing that doesn't get recovered is the actual e-mail accounts; you need to re-add those manually; just as well you wrote down the passwords for them; when you add them inbound e-mails still on the server will be retrieved


A couple of notes on detecting if this has happened to you and possible alternative recovery options:


  • if, when you bring Mail up for the first time after the upgrade, you see a list of different kinds of e-mail accounts (Google, Yahoo etc) then you know this has happened to you and recovery is necessary


  • it may be possible to recover the messages by opening Mail and then opening TimeMachine; this is the first option that Apple support will offer; it didn't work for the owner of this thread and it didn't work for me - Mail crashes
  • the other options that Apple support offered were unappealing including

- restoring back to the version of Mac OS that you upgraded from and redoing the upgrade; I personally wasn't willing to try this one because of the time and effort, the risk, and my lack of any confidence that the upgrade would succeed second time around

- deleting and re-adding the user id; I wasn't prepared to try this one either



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User profile for user: Tripteron
Tripteron Author
User level: Level 1
13 points

Dec 25, 2019 8:12 AM in response to Tripteron

I have concluded that Apple Mail cannot be trusted to store and import messages reliably. After going through much hassle to recover from loss of messages in Catalina (see earlier post), I exported all my messages and imported them into Postbox. Several folders have more messages in them than what Apple Mail was showing. Some messages that were showing the wrong dates in Apple Mail are now showing the correct dates in Postbox. One mailbox with over 10,000 messages of correspondence with a close friend shows 1500 (!) more messages in Postbox than in Apple Mail.


So I am trying out Postbox. It looks very good so far. Got a good review in MacWorld. You can learn more here:

https://postbox-inc.com


Postbox stores messages in mbox format in a simpler folder structure than what Apple uses, so importing messages back into Apple Mail should be pretty easy if you change your mind later.

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User profile for user: Ian Blavins
Ian Blavins
User level: Level 1
9 points

Jan 23, 2020 3:54 PM in response to Tripteron

G'day,


A further note on this.


After the Catalina upgrade completed, even though Mail considered that the e-mail system was empty, in the mail folder in /Users/.../Library the folders for each of the accounts were present and, collectively, they contained 40,000 plus items totalling 3GB odd. So the e-mails appeared to be present even if Mail didn't know it. After running the procedure described above a further set of folders is created, one for each account re-added. And they contain the recovered e-mails. So be aware that each e-mail now occurs twice in the Mail folder. I suspect one day this will come back to bite us.

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User profile for user: Ian Blavins
Ian Blavins
User level: Level 1
9 points

Jan 23, 2020 4:53 PM in response to Tripteron

G'day,


The solution described may still be applicable even if you have resigned yourself to the fact that other methods have failed to restore your lost e-mails - even if you have formatted your hard drive as part of the recovery process.


If you still have a backup of /Users/<your user id>/Library/Mail/V<some number> from before you upgraded you may still be able to recover your mail by following that process. (This backup should still be in TimeMachine if nowhere else.)


If you don't have that backup then have a look at /Users/<your user id>/Library/Mail/V7. If this is large then your e-mails are probably there and you may be able to apply the procedure to that. (I haven't tried this.) You want to apply it folders whose names are of the form <Hex number>...<Hex number> whose date is the day of your upgrade. Don't apply it to folders of that form of name whose dates are after the date of the upgrade because these are for your current mail accounts.


Good luck.

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User profile for user: sskirving
sskirving
User level: Level 1
9 points

Jan 24, 2020 5:13 AM in response to Ian Blavins

HI,


I've now fixed my email problem, using similar processes to those mentioned above...


I ended up doing a clean install of Catalina, then restored my backup on to that


The emails were still not visible, but I could see the mbox files in the library folder - so I copied them on to my NAS box

Then I imported them back into mail successfully


Strange thing is, when one opens "import" section, you have a choice of import mbox files or apple mail - the "obvious answer" would be mbox files - but alas its the apple mail one you have t o pick to import these mbox files....


Thanks everyone for their suggestions

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Email messages lost, missing, disappeared, or blank in Catalina (macOS 10.15)

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