Account deleted from Mail. Any way to recover it?

I know that if you want to preserve email from an account you plan to delete that you must move to other mailboxes. Unfortunately, a family member deleted the account without safetying the emails. Is there any way to pull it from a backup—not Time Machine, a SuperDuper clone?

I believe he's on Monteray, on a 2021 iMac.

Thanks!

iMac (24-inch, M1, 2021, 2 ports)

Posted on Jun 26, 2022 12:06 PM

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3 replies

Barney-15E

Level 10

122,504 points

Jun 26, 2022 12:53 PM in response to smalps

If the email account was a POP account where the messages are stored on your computer and removed from the server, you can try to import those messages from the backup.

They are stored in a folder with a unique ID string for a name inside of ~/Library/Mail/V9/ folder. If there were custom mailboxes made, you can identify the account by looking inside of each for the custom mailboxes. Or, I guess since it was deleted, look for the extra folder in the backup.

When you import, it will import everything in subfolders, too. The folder structure will not be maintained, so if you want to keep the folder structure, import each mailbox subfolder individually and move the messages from the Import folder into another, properly named folder.

ku4hx

Level 7

23,694 points

Jun 26, 2022 12:12 PM in response to smalps

What happens on the Mac doesn't affect your Web based mail account. It's still there.

Just recreate the Mac mail account from scratch using the same web credentials the original Mac account used.

smalps Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 3, 2022 5:22 PM in response to Barney-15E

Thank you!

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Account deleted from Mail. Any way to recover it?