Apple Mail: emails in an "On My Mac" mailbox disappeared

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Apple Mail: emails in an "On My Mac" mailbox disappeared

I'm using Apple Mail Version 14.0 (3654.120.0.1.13) on an iMac running Big Sur (11.6.5).

I was organizing my business receipts in Apple Mail, and I moved all the relevant 2021 messages into a new mailbox "On My Mac". The messages were all in there, but each one suddenly appeared to have no content. However, the message sizes (15kb, etc.) were all intact, so I figured the messages were there, but some glitch was keeping them from showing. I tried "rebuilding" the mailbox, because Apple recommends doing that when messages are not visible. Nothing seemed to happen--I didn't see the "rebuilding" activity notice at the bottom left. However, shortly after, all the messages except for those from one vendor (which I had done a Spotlight search for at about the same time) disappeared from the mailbox.

I'm thinking now that the "rebuilding" discarded the messages, and somehow the Spotlight search preserved the ones from the single vendor. I didn't understand before that rebuilding meant the local messages would be thrown away. But I don't think the messages are on my email server anymore, since I previously moved them into an "On My Mac" mailbox, so I can't re-download them. (Apple should make it that you can't hit "rebuild" on a local mailbox.)

So my question is:

1) If messages in a local "On My Mac" mailbox are deleted, do they go into some trashcan before disappearing permanently? I looked, but couldn't find them.

2) Could I get these messages back through Time Machine? This post indicates no, but I thought that you could do that before. (I wish Apple had told me that my email was no longer being archived.)

3) Is there any other way I could get these messages back? It's for my taxes.

Thanks to anyone who has ideas.

iMac 27″, macOS 11.6

Posted on Apr 3, 2022 1:59 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

tbirdvet

Level 6

14,501 points

Apr 3, 2022 2:23 PM in response to VermiciousKnid

Open Finder, then option key "GO" then library and open the mail folder then the V9 folder. In there will be a number of folders with cryptic titles. Start to open those and work down until you see "on my Mac" folders. Open those to find the folder you want. Then open Time machine and go back to the date you want. Copy that folder to your desktop. Then once back in mail you can import that folder.

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Answer 2

Tesserax

Level 10

152,380 points

Apr 3, 2022 3:09 PM in response to VermiciousKnid

VermiciousKnid wrote:

2) Could I get these messages back through Time Machine? This post indicates no, but I thought that you could do that before. (I wish Apple had told me that my email was no longer being archived.)

I did add that comment in the post you indicated. What I should have added is that this only relates to using the Time Machine interface to access email backups. Apple Mail is still being backed up to the Time Machine destination drive, but you will need to use Finder to "drill down" to the backed up Mail folders to access them. This is what I believe tbirdvet is referring to. However, you will not be able to access them using the Time Machine interface ... only via Finder.

That is, once you confirmed the location of the "On My Mac" mail folder on your Mac, via Finder, as tbirdvet has mentioned. You will need to use Finder again, to drill down on your TM backup drive (not use Time Machine) to find the same folder at the date(s) you want to recover your emails from.

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Apple Mail: emails in an "On My Mac" mailbox disappeared

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