Emails disappeared from subfolders in Mail.

Question

Level 1

4 points

Emails disappeared from subfolders in Mail.

Hi all,

I was recently filing in, rearranging and renaming some self-created subfolders on my Mac Mail. Something unknown to me happened (I think it was when I was renaming a folder and I tried to use a forward slash which wasn't allowed), and suddenly all the saved emails in the subfolders disappeared. There are still emails showing in the main folder, and in all my other folders/subfolders, but not in the subfolders of the one I was sorting (which of course was the most important). I don't want to restore from backup if possible because the backup is a little old and I'll lose some of my newer stuff. Does anyone have any ideas where they could be? I can't find them when I type in the search bar, and also I noted an "Archive" and "Bin" folder have shown up underneath the problem folder which I don't think were there before, but there is nothing in them either. I'm on a Mac Air running Monterey 12.5.

Any clues would be much appreciated. 🙏

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 12.5

Posted on Feb 20, 2023 2:46 AM

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Answer 1

JessS19

Community Specialist

Feb 21, 2023 12:33 PM in response to stjoan88

Greetings stjoan88,

You may be able to restore the missing Mailbox without having to restore the whole Mac.

"On your Mac, open a window for the item you want to restore.

For example, to recover a file you accidentally deleted from your Documents folder, open the Documents folder.

If you’re missing an item from the desktop, you don’t need to open a window.

Use Launchpad to view and open apps on Mac and open Time Machine (in the Other folder). A message may appear while your Mac connects to the backup disk.

Use the arrows and timeline to browse the local snapshots and backups.

If you see a pulsing light to semi-dark gray tick mark, it represents a backup that’s still loading or validating on the backup disk.

Select one or more items you want to restore (these can include folders or your entire disk), then click Restore.

"Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac

We hope this helps resolve the issue with the missing Mailbox.

Sincerely.

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Answer 2

SnickZ.

Community Specialist

Feb 28, 2023 7:33 AM in response to stjoan88

Hello stjoan88,

Since the mailbox is missing, try rebuilding the main mailbox: Rebuild mailboxes in Mail on Mac - Apple Support

Please let us know the results when you're able.

All the best.

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Answer 3

stjoan88 Author

Level 1

4 points

Feb 28, 2023 5:23 AM in response to JessS19

Hi Jess S19,

Thanks for your reply. The mailbox is missing from the Mail app. I'm not sure where to look for a missing Mail mailbox in a backup file in finder...do you know what the file path would be?

Thanks.

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Answer 4

stjoan88 Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 14, 2023 4:10 AM in response to SnickZ.

Hi SnickZ,

Yes!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! It was a little time consuming as I had to build each missing one individually but it worked, hooray! Thanks so much for your help, and appreciate your advice too thanks JessS19.

Cheers!

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Emails disappeared from subfolders in Mail.

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