How can I access ~/library on my time machine backup?

Hi HonestDon and Alberto

Thanks for your posts. I think I've just added another level of complexity!

After trawling the internet last night and this morning your posts are as close as I've got to restoring Mailboxes and Photos from a previous User account stored on my Time Machine to a new user account just created on Mavericks.

Unfortunately in between I left my Mac running (with TM activated) and it appears to have erased the ONLY solid User Library backup I had on the TM (due to insufficient memory). Do you know if there is a way of accessing an 'erased' version of a different User Library on TM? i.e. is there a temporary 'trash' or something similar for 'erased' User Libraries?

Thanks in advance

Alex

Hello,

No idea if someone already wrote that because I haven't read the whole thread, but this worked for me and seems to be the easiest way to access User's Library content within Time Machine:

On the desktop, open a window with the User's Library:

Command+Shift+G, then type ~/Library/

orleft click on Go menu + hold down alt key, then choose Library

Once the window is open, click Enter Time Machine in the Time Machine Menu

Cheers,

Richard

If you have backup on a dmg and must import to mail.app

mount disk, in terminal go to disk,

cd /Volumes/HD\ copy/Users/me/

show all folders:

ls -Ol

drwx------@ 71 me staff hidden 2414 5 Jan 2014 Library

drwx------+ 8 me staff - 272 25 Nov 2013 Movies

its hidden, unhide:

sudo chflags nohidden Library/

ls -Ol

drwx------+ 71 me staff - 2414 5 Jan 2014 Library

---

To hide again:

sudo chflags hidden Library/

ls -Ol

drwx------@ 71 me staff hidden 2414 5 Jan 2014 Library

Alberto Ravasio you're the MAN! I know this is old but IDC!! You saved my life here! Since I moved my home directory to my 6TB raid, and went to restore on new computer it completely messed up my admin logins and had to just do a fresh install of OS, and manually drag what I wanted over. This included mail which was the hardest to find!! Thank you again!

According to Wikipedia, "Elegance is beauty that shows unusual effectiveness and simplicity." This solution (simple and effective) surely qualifies as elegant (the "beauty" part coming from how much time and frustration it saved me). Thank you Alberto. 🙂

Simplest is to first navigate to your user's folder in back up then do following from the same finder window

1- Command + Shift + G

2- In the popup type exactly this (without any / or \ or ~ etc): Library

Now it should take you to the Library folder of your selected backup.

Could you please report here the result of the following 2 (Terminal) commands after following the procedure I gave you

pwd

ls -la

thanks

Alberto, thank you, you Terminal-using ninja. I never would've figured this out by myself. Worked perfectly!

Thanks Alberto, your solution using Terminal worked perfectly for me!

Thank you, Alberto. Very helpful!

HonesDon: Your solution helped me when I experienced the same issue! Big thanks!!

Thanks so much Alberto! You saved me some serious time.

Hi HonestDon,

That script worked a treat and I was able to locate my Lion mail boxes (which were hidden) and data and import them to my new mail in Mavericks.

Kind Regards, Alfred (Australia)