Need to restore individual email messages from Apple Mail client

I do not use servers to hold my email; it is downloaded and then removed from servers. My work requires strict confidentiality. I use both Exchange and POP accounts and one or two IMAP accounts.

I use Apple’s Mail client, exclusively - even for Exchange.

In trying to restore a few individual email messages, the “Enter Time Machine” directive did not work as expected or as it previously did. I had noted this before but my frustration has reached the point of my having to report this now.

Rather than being able to go to a particular email mailbox, go into Time Machine, and see the variations in time, invoking Time Machine would only go to finder. This is not what used to happen nor was it expected.

Instead of a VERY simple and easily understood restoration of missing email messages, I had to go into ~/Library/Mail/V9/ and try to figure out the incomprehensibly and arbitrarily named folder to try to figure out which went with which. I restored that folder and the MailData folders to recover to where I needed to be.

This is beyond the pale. Apple’s assumption here that people keep their email messages elsewhere is completely unreasonable, significantly reduces or constrains how people use their Macs.

My Macintosh (3 of them) and my iPhone and my iPad, while supporting my personal life, are also indispensable parts of my professional life and work. Apple should keep this in mind when architecting such capabilities or, equally as important, eliminating them - especially without adequate warning!

Please “restore” this capability - restoring individual email messages!!!