Time Machine won't restore Mail

Question

Time Machine won't restore Mail

Like a crazy man I delete my Mail Spam and Trash regularly. Today, by accident I highlighted all the mail in my Apple Mail inbox and deleted it and then deleted the trash - it's gone.

Feeling somewhat relaxed, I went to my Time Machine with Mail open and accessed Time Machine. But nothing, the restore is greyed out. There are backups available in Time Machine but even as I click on old backups e.g. an hour before I deleted everything, nothing changes.

The email account in question is my work GMAIL account that I access using Apple Mail. GMAIL reflects my Apple Mail inbox - the mail is gone there too.

At this point it feels like Time Machine is a huge failure. Any suggestions?

MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 10.15

Posted on Aug 2, 2020 6:29 PM

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Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

250,259 points

Aug 3, 2020 8:28 AM in response to derek_bell@mac.com

In Finder navigate to...

/Users/YourUsersName/Library/Mail/V7

Then enter Time Machine... any change?

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Answer 2

Aug 5, 2020 10:01 AM in response to BDAqua

I too have this problem with Mail and Time Machine. I have previously been able to restore an email from Time Machine but this no longer appears to work under Catalina 10.15.6 on a 2103 iMac 27". I followed advice elsewhere and started a new back up set, but this has made no difference. On entering Time Machine when in Mail, the timeline is greyed out and I am unable to scroll back in time - the only button that can be pressed is the "cancel". When trying to restore a file from Finder Time Machine functions as expected and I can scroll back to previous dates and select a file to restore.

I have tried your suggestion above but this has made no difference

Thanks

Mark

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