Recovery from Rebuild?

You should have chosen from the Help Topics section rather than the Menu Items section of the menu. The Menu Items section helps you find relevant menu items if you aren't sure where they're located.

That said, rebuilding a mailbox shouldn't make you lose mail. If it did, that means there was something serious wrong with that mailbox. Normally, the suggestion you'd get to try to recover lost mail would be to rebuild the mailbox, but since that's what caused the problem, it's doubtful that anything will recover that mail. You could try exploring the mailbox files in ~/Library/Mail/ and see if you can find the messages by opening the mailbox file with a text editor.

If that doesn't work, your only recourse would be to restore from a backup. If you don't currently have any backups, you've just learned the hard way why you need them. See my [Mac Backup Guide|http://www.reedcorner.net/thomas/guides/backups> for assistance in getting started on the backup process.

What version of OSX are you running -- your info says 10.5.8, but you have posted in the Mail forum for Snow Leopard which does run on your indicated hardware?

Something to check in the size of the mailbox you rebuilt? If the Inbox of a POP account, quit Mail, and in the Finder open Home/Library/Mail/this POP account folder. Then locate the INBOX.mbox folder, use Get Info, and check its size? Is it at or in excess of 2 GB?

If not the Inbox, what other mailbox is this?

Ernie

Greg,

You probably only needed to allow Rebuild to finish. The question about mailbox size was to see if there could be any reason Rebuild could not finish, which if not overstuffed, it should have been able to do.

Ernie

I did exactly the same thing - idly clicked on "rebuild mailbox," thinking it sounded like a sensible thing to do, and immediately lost 1000s of really critical emails - Yes they probably are somewhere as emix files - but it seems ABSOLUTELY INSANE that the "rebuild mailbox" command is SO DESTRUCTIVE. There MUST be a way to re-import them collectively into my inbox surely???!!!!! HELP

DKay,

Rebuild does not destroy email messages!

In the Finder open Home/Library/Mail/this account folder or On My Mac mailbox. Then, if an account folder, locate the INBOX.mbox folder, use Get Info and report its size?

Ernie

The exact thing happened to me as well. I use to have over 2000 emails and now have 12. The size of the inbox.mbox folder is now 23.9 MB (Messages sub folder takes up 9.7mb, Attachments takes up 14.1 MB).

If this really does mean that all of my emails have disappeared then is a terrible, terrible feature. How do they not have a warning message of some sort?

Do you have any backup copy done prior to using Rebuild with which to make the same analysis of size?

There would not be a warning message because the function does not remove message content. It only updates the universal index for the content of this one mailbox. It can only remove listings of messages that are no longer there.

More info, please.

Ernie

Thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

I don't unfortunately have a backup copy - I back most things up but didn't think that I would need to back up my mail as it should be on Yahoo's server. The problem is that when I recently set up this account on my mac it automatically selected the option to delete of the server after a week (another feature that baffles me). I also discovered this to my horror after going to the browser version of my account once all the mail's were gone due to the rebuild.

In short:
- Mail deleted from server through POP settings
- Mail deleted from computer through rebuild

I really hope they are still somewhere on my computer...

What, exactly, took place that prompted you to use Rebuild?

Might be useful to peruse the entire Mail folder, and check to see if there is more than one account folder that seems related to this Yahoo account.

Ernie

Message was edited by: Ernie Stamper

The account went offline and I was unable to get (or send any mail) - I started troubleshooting and changed the SMTP server to see if that would help (it didn't). I eventually changed it back and through a bit more tinkering got it back online. I noticed at that point, however, that the majority of my sent emails were gone. The strange thing is that unlike the received emails (which have been deleted by Mail) the sent mails are all on the server.

I tried synchronizing the accounts hoping that would bring back the missing sent mails but that didn't have any effect (good or bad). So then I tried the rebuild function naively thinking this would restore anything missing - not discard 90% of the account.

I've looked through the entire Mail folder, searched with keywords from the emails (as well as mbox and emlx) and so far not luck. The one strange thing is that my trash seems very large. Finder is unable to calculate it's size even though it looks empty. I thought perhaps the missing mails were there but invisible - no luck here either unfortunately - so its probably unrelated.

Assuming that the missing files cannot be found on the hard-drive through "normal" means - do you think it would be possible to recover them using recovery software of some kind?

I managed eventually to find the pathway to my ex-inbox and recover it, though it was a bit like pulling teeth. And then I was able to "Import" it into a folder that at least then was viewable from within my Mail application. I think maybe I found it by locating where my "Sent" folder was located.

Sounds like you badly need to run Disc Utilities... your main Directory sounds like it's a bit up the creek. Once that's done you might find it easier to find the relocated folder.

I think the sooner Apple ditch this dis-functional function the better... or at least offer a warning box after you select to tell you that your inbox is going to vanish and where to locate it if you need it back.

What I am guessing is that something happened to force you to set up the account again, and instead of declining to import anything when prompted, you approved that. When that happens Mail replaces the existing account folder with a new one, and only downloads those messages currently on the server. Since your access with the other computer had removed those on the server, only new messages were downloaded. Then you assumed the messages would return if you used Rebuild, but that is not possible, and is not the function of Rebuild. You say you set the account up on your Mac, but it defaulted to remove from the POP server. Where did you have the account set before this, where you had an INBOX that you thought would respond to Rebuild?

The Sent messages are on the Yahoo server because there has been no command from any computer to delete those.

I think you are mistaken in blaming Rebuild for this issue since the loss of messages seems to have taken place prior to using Rebuild.

Ernie

Thanks to both of you for your help - it's much appreciated.

I'm not really blaming Rebuild for the loss, I just think there are a number of dangerous elements that can really get you into trouble unless you know what you are doing. For example, why would the default setting when setting up a POP account be to delete all emails that are older than a week off the server? That's simply insane. If somebody has no experience with setting up mail accounts they are never going to know Mail is doing this - and I doubt it's something anybody would want as well.

Rebuild just got rid of all the email files I had stored on my computer and whether that was my fault or Rebuilds at the end of it I just want them back 🙂

To clarify:
I had a Yahoo account that I was using through a web browser. About 3 months ago I got a new Macbook and set up the Yahoo account using Mail. Everything was going fine until I was unable to send or receive mail. At this point I had my whole inbox as well as my sent items in the Mail app. Then I tried to fix it, which ultimately resulted in losing the majority of the sent items but I still had all of my inbox. That's when I tried to "Rebuild" and lost my whole inbox (except for everything that wasn't older than a week). After some distraught digging I was even more shocked to see everything on the browser version was gone as well...

Which leaves me confused - what is the function of Rebuild? It seems that what it has done right now is synchronized what's on the server with what's on the computer (i.e. discarding all inbox emails).
Should these emails not at the very least be transported to trash? Is there anywhere they could be?

Thanks to both of you for your help - it's much appreciated.

I'm not really blaming Rebuild for the loss, I just think there are a number of dangerous elements that can really get you into trouble unless you know what you are doing. For example, why would the default setting when setting up a POP account be to delete all emails that are older than a week off the server? That's simply insane. If somebody has no experience with setting up mail accounts they are never going to know Mail is doing this - and I doubt it's something anybody would want as well.

Rebuild just got rid of all the email files I had stored on my computer and whether that was my fault or Rebuilds at the end of it I just want them back 🙂

To clarify:
I had a Yahoo account that I was using through a web browser. About 3 months ago I got a new Macbook and set up the Yahoo account using Mail. Everything was going fine until I was unable to send or receive mail. At this point I had my whole inbox as well as my sent items in the Mail app. Then I tried to fix it, which ultimately resulted in losing the majority of the sent items but I still had all of my inbox. That's when I tried to "Rebuild" and lost my whole inbox (except for everything that wasn't older than a week). After some distraught digging I was even more shocked to see everything on the browser version was gone as well...

Which leaves me confused - what is the function of Rebuild? It seems that what it has done right now is synchronized what's on the server with what's on the computer (i.e. discarding all inbox emails).
Should these emails not at the very least be transported to trash? Is there anywhere they could be?