How to recover deleted draft

And why doesn't Mail send a deleted draft to the trash folder????

I does - I just tried it. I created a draft, and did exactly what you did. It disappeared from the Drafts folder but when I clicked on Trash in the Mail sidebar there it was. (It won't be in the System Trash).

If you managed somehow to delete it from the Mail Trash then I'm afraid it's gone: however it's just remotely possible that a recovery program might find it, but it's unlikely and you would really need to have not been using your Mac since you deleted it - the more you use it the more chance of it being overwritten.

You could try FileSalvage - it has a trial mode which will enable you to see but not recover files; it costs $89.95 for a fully working version. The file will appear as 'emix' followed by a number (at least it does in Snow Leopard, I don't remember whether it's different in Leopard), but there will one of these for every email you ever deleted which has not been overwritten and there is no way to know which is your draft unless you can do it by date - I don't know whether FileSalvage can do that. It's a lot of cost and hassle with, I'm afraid, a low chance of success.

Message was edited by: Roger Wilmut1