Restoring an email using Time Machine

Question

Level 1

20 points

Restoring an email using Time Machine

I have a Mac Mini running Catalina 10.15.5. I use Time Machine to regularly backup onto an external disk. I have a few emails (one conversation) which I seem to have accidentally deleted.

When I enter TM for any other file, I can see the Restore button and the arrows which allow me to move back in time, and they work. But when I open Mail and enter TM, those buttons are greyed out and I can do nothing. Yet the Mail backups are there because I can open the backups.backupdb file and open the actual emails. I would do it that way, but of course I don't know which of the hundreds of folders and thousands of files is the one I need.

Can anyone tell me please, why TM won't open my Mail backups, and if there is any workaround (a) to make it do that, or (b) to search the Backups.backupdb file for a particular email (if I can think of a good search term)?

Thanks.

Posted on Aug 11, 2020 3:38 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

MoonJ.

Community Specialist

Aug 13, 2020 8:09 AM in response to unkleE

Good morning unkleE,

Thanks for reaching out through the Apple Support Communities!

You've stated you're having some issues restoring your emails through Time Machine and that the buttons are greyed out when using Time Machine in Mail.

What we'd like you to try from here is to make sure that the Inbox is open and selected before attempting to restore your information from Time Machine.

You can find more information on this here: Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac

Have a good one!

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Answer 2

ddminter

Level 1

68 points

Aug 19, 2020 10:31 AM in response to unkleE

Sorry to let you know this functionality has been broken since December 2019. I have had a case open since then - no indication it will ever be fixed. Even emailed Tim Cook's office and got a polite person to call. But zero actually done to fix this.

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Answer 3

jeremy_v

Community Specialist

Aug 16, 2020 7:31 AM in response to unkleE

Thanks for getting back with us unkleE,

For our next step, after you enter Time Machine try the keyboard combination of Shift+Command+C, this will allow you to make sure the window you're on will show all mounted volumes, and now all of your snapshots should be accessible.

If you still have some issues, we'd like you to try our steps here to check your devices and if there are any errors: If you can't back up or restore your Mac using Time Machine

Let us know if you have further questions.

Take care!

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Answer 4

unkleE Author

Level 1

20 points

Aug 15, 2020 3:50 AM in response to MoonJ.

Hi MoonJ,

Sorry to delay in replying, I wrote up a reply yesterday, but I mustn't have sent it. So here I go again. I think I have done all that you have said already, but the relevant buttons are still greyed out. Here is a screen shot:

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Answer 5

unkleE Author

Level 1

20 points

Aug 16, 2020 5:28 PM in response to jeremy_v

Hi Jeremy, thanks for your help. I can see that what you say is part of my solution, but it doesn't get me there.

When I first asked for help, I could access all other files on TM, just not my emails. Yet I could see by opening backups.backupdb that the emails were there. And as you can see from the screenshot, the email headings at least showed in the window.

When I opened TM today, I couldn't even see the email headings, though the window heading showed the number of emails there at the top e.g. Inbox (308 messages) - which is actually not all the messages there (the present number is 682). Further, when I tried Cmd-Shift-C all that happened was that the Colours box came up!

So I tried TM on my internal drive, and on my backup drive, and it showed the files there but the arrow buttons were greyed out. I tried Cmd-Shift-C as you suggested, and the arrow buttons came to life and I could move back in time OK.

So it seems I have two separate issues:

(1) I need to know the Cmd-Shift-C trick - can you explain to me what is happening there please?

(2) But the emails are a separate problem. Just to demonstrate, here are screen shots of how TM appears now with Mac Mail, how the backup disk appears in TM, and a file listing in backups.backupdb to show that there are indeed emails there.

Thanks again for your help - I really do need it!

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