I thoughtlessly, casually, allowed an update install. Once complete I discovered that I'd lost all my email folders where I store mail for future reference. I haven't explicitly used Time Machine, so I don't know if that's backed anything up or not. Is there a way to restore these mail folders?
Did it not recreate the Comcast folders from the server? That is how IMAP is supposed to work.
If you have all of your archive folders on the Comcast Server, you were using an IMAP account and they were all on the server.
Is there a section labeled Comcast in the Mailboxes list? Maybe the subfolders are hidden.
If it does say Comcast (or whatever the account is named) in the Mailbox list, hover your cursor over the right side of the mailbox list, next to Comcast and see if "show" appears. If so, click it.
Where in the Comcast account are the folders? Are they inside of the Inbox--Mail doesn't support subfolders of the Inbox very well.
You may be able to restore from a snapshot made prior to installing the update. Not sure that will help, though.
Were the archive folders in the On My Mac section, or part of an email account?
You can try to rebuild the mailbox, but if there isn't any of them showing, you wouldn't be able to rebuild it.
You might be able to find the folders in the Mail data store, but I need to get an idea of where they were in Mail to tell you where to look in the Mail library.
The folders were inside Mail. I'd just slide email that I wanted to hold onto from my Inbox into a folder categorized by topic that I setup in Mail. I never consciously backed them up anywhere else. The system is a macOS Catalina version 10.15.6. But I don't know what version I was updating from. Is there a way to see that somewhere or just reverse the update? Thanks for your inquiries.
Okay, so hold the press. Critical discovery. All my email folders and old email are intact in my Comcast email account online. So the update seemed to erase everything, or all my backup folders, in my Mail app on my MacBook but didn't reach my Comcast mail account. So now I have to figure out how to get all the folders back into my Mail app or just give that up and use my online email acc, which does take two or three more clicks to access. Any relevant advice would be appreciated. Thanks.
Where were these email folders stored on your hard drive? Or, are you talking specifically inside Mail?
What version did you update from?
lost archived emails and folders after a system update
