Recovering Lost Inbox Email Messages

Salutations G4RAY, 

If the account was setup as IMAP prior to removing it from your Mac then your inbox messages should be stored on your email service provider’s servers. You can check that by logging into the webmail for your email account. For example, for an iCloud account that would the iCloud website - iCloud. 

If the account was previously set up as a POP account, then there is a chance the emails were all stored on your Mac only. In that case, do you make regular backups of your Mac using Time Machine or any other backup service? If so, you may be able to recover the emails from your backup. The following article goes over how to restore data from Time Machine (the built-in back up app) - Restore items backed up with Time Machine on Mac

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

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

Restored items return to their original location. For example, if an item was in the Documents folder, it’s returned to the Documents folder.

Thanks.

Sorry, there are no settings to speak of for this purpose. As you know, TM makes, as a minimum, hourly backups ... and others at other time periods. If it doesn't find a backup destination, it will make local snapshots (actually, it makes those even if it does).

A gap could possibly indicate a number of things. The most likely is a corrupted back up set.

I'm assuming that you have been making backups to an external drive. There is no such thing as backing up your mail to iCloud. Each IMAP email account stores messages on their respective servers. POP accounts (an older technology) work differently. In this case, when mail is accessed, it is downloaded to your computer and no longer exists on the provider's servers. This is something AnnieL2 was referring to.

When you used Finder to locate your emails, you should have noticed that within those TM backups, dated folders. If you have been consistently running TM, they should be quite a few of them. If any are missing for the date range you are interested in, then they are gone ... and there is no way to retrieve those messages.

Something you may want to consider and something that I have been doing for years, in addition, to TM, is to use a third-party email archiving app. I like MailSteward. Somewhat similar to TM, it will make period archive copies of all of your messages into a singular database, which you can easily extract any of those messages. In turn, TM will back up this database, so you actually have two levels of protection.

The issue is how Time Machine (TM) handles mail changed since macOS Catalina. Basically, TM still backs up the Mail app, but it no longer allows you to recover Mail backups from the TM interface. This is where tbirdvet is alluding to by you having to use the Finder app to attempt to recover those messages.

Here's a bit more detail on how to give this a try:

1. If running, close the Apple Mail app.
2. Open a new Finder window: Finder > File > New Finder Window
3. To view hidden files, use the <cmd><shift><period> key combination. Note: They don't need to be held down simultaneously.
4. Select your Time Machine backup drive from Finder.
5. Open: Backups.backupdb > Your Mac's Name > The backup folder with the date you want to restore from > Macintosh HD or Macintosh HD - Data (on Catalina+) > Users > Your User Name > Library > Mail > Vx (where x = 9 for Monterey)
6. Copy (NOT move) the entire V9  folder somewhere on your Mac, preferably somewhere not syncing with a cloud service. A good place would be the Downloads folder.
7. Open the V9 folder you just copied to the Downloads folder. You’ll see a bunch of alphanumeric folders ... one for each email account and one for the "On My Mac" mailboxes. Open each one until you find the mailboxes you’re looking for. Be sure to note the directory path to where it is located.
8. Open the Mail app.
9. Choose File > Import Mailboxes, navigate to the noted location
10. Choose “Import as Apple Mail”.
11. Next, in the Mail app, you’ll see a new “Import” folder, maybe with another sub folder. Your mail should be in there.

It may be possible to retrieve an entire mail folder by following this process:

To restore mailbox:

Open Finder

Click “GO” in top menu bar then click option key

Open mail folder

Open V9 (or similar) folder

Then find the folders labeled with cryptic titles (at this point you could open TM if you want to go back in time)

Look down through those folders to find a mailbox (note: there may be more than one with same label).

If it contains email you want you can copy the entire folder to your desktop

Go back into mail and import that folder from your desktop

G4RAY wrote:

Again, it was all gone when I signed back in to my account on my iMac on Friday after everything locked up, then I signed out for a second time and signed in with IMAP and Sent messages were visible. Inbox was empty on my iMac.

... and again, this is the nature on how POP vs. IMAP accounts work ... which can be confusing at times. Most, if not all new email providers only offer IMAP accounts now.

As mentioned by another earlier, but worth giving an example.

You started with a POP account. With these accounts mail, whether they are in the Inbox, Draft, Sent, etc. mailbox, they are all kept on the provider's servers UNTIL you access them from a mail client on your computer. Once doing so, all of those messages are downloaded to that computer. As such, the messages that were on those servers are all deleted once downloaded. That is why, if you attempt to access that same account from another device, you will find all of those messages "missing."

When you switched to an IMAP account, like POP, the messages are stored on the servers. However, this time, when you access them, you get a copy of those messages and the originals stay on those servers. That way, you can access them from multiple devices and still access those same messages. If you do delete them from any client, that would be the only time the other clients would not be able access them.

Now the mystery is how did Spectrum handle your messages when you switched from their POP to IMAP service. It appears, from what you posted, not very well.