Mail and Time Machine

For many of us, Time Machine has not been working to restore Mail since December 2019. I have had a case open since then, have sent GB's of info to Apple, etc. Apple has not made any attempt to fix it. Reinstalling Catalina does not work, nor does anything else Apple has suggested over the last 5 months. It probably won't ever get fixed unless people that are having problems - like you - start cases with Apple. on stay on them.

I agree with you after a year of frustration trying to figure out what I'm doing wrong. Contacting Apple support has lead to nothing, not even acknowledgement from them that it is not functional and why. Incidentally this began occurring for me in MacOS vs 10.14. I've seen reference to IMAP being the cause but I've been using IMAP mail connectivity for a long time and it did work. Backup schemes must be solid. If a backup scheme is going to evolve out of use by the vendor then it is a false assurance to the end user which makes it useless because we can't rely upon it. Thank you for clearly stating that it is an issue with Time Machine and Mail, not with the user.

Sent and email to Tim Cook. In 20+ years all Apple household, never had a problem take so long to fix. An executive team assistant called a couple times. But again - no progress, no commitment to fix, and the problem is remains. If they are not going to support Time Machine - fine - tell us. But people who count on it are in for a rude surprise when they need it. There are other backup solutions/programs, but I have not found one with the handy capabilities that Time Machine has for Mail. What happens is I mistakenly delete a mail, then figure it out months later (e.g. was in the middle of an email convo on a certain date, and erased an important email by mistake). So searching Time Machine by date for Mail is important to me; have not found a good alternative for that...

Time Machine used to work also with the iPhoto app but that functionality was abandoned. Perhaps this is a bug with Mail or perhaps they are removing the feature. We can restore pur entire mailbox via the Finder window in Time Machine, but not a single email. It’s probably best to use more than one backup strategy just in case. Being a Mac user since the beginning I understand the frustration but I’ll keep hoping that they will continue to support a robust Time Machine app.

I'm having the same problem. I wonder if the Time Machine app on my local drive is only looking at the local TM file without reaching out to the TM Backup files on the connected external drive (which has been selected as the default backup destination).

Possible TM is only looking at local files. I save everything in iCloud now, so would that mean TM is backing up nothing? I am coming to the conclusion that TM can't be relied on for anything, mail or anything else. What is the point of an unreliable and unpredictable backup? I'm thinking about a different backup solution; hear a lot about Carbon Copy. It does not have all the nuances and features of TM. But then again neither does TM anymore. :)