Restore sent email from time machine

Please post the complete, verbatim text of the error message exactly as you see it.

Are you trying to copy files from a TM backup folder in the Finder?

Bring the Mail browser window forward, then enter Time Machine. Scroll back in the time-travel view to the most recent snapshot taken before you deleted the messages you want to restore. Select the messages, then click Restore.

You seem to have misconfigured file permissions in your home folder. That will be hard to fix, because they're misconfigured in your backups too.

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.

Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:

tmutil listbackups

The output will be a list of your available TM snapshots. Each line will be of the following form:

Back in the Terminal window, enter the following text:

dst="

That's a quote at the end with no spaces. Don't press return yet. Now locate the folder you want to restore in the Finder. Make a copy of that folder and drag the copy to the Desktop. Drag the original folder (not the copy) into the Terminal window. More text will be entered automatically on the same line. Press delete once, then shift-", then return.

Then enter the following line, press return, and post the output:

echo $dst

Now enter this (copy or drag, don't type):

snapshot="/Volumes/Rob's backup/Backups.backupdb/Rob Glisson Laptop/2012-04-10-073218"

Press return. Now this:

src="${snapshot}/*/$dst/"

Press return. Now this:

echo $src

Press return. Post the output of the last command.

That output isn't correct. I don't think I can talk you through such a complex operation.

Although I don't like to give this kind of advice, what you'll have to do is enable root logins, log in as root, and do the restore. Then log out of the root account and disable it. Finally, repair the permissions of your home folder as directed below.

Enabling and using the "root" user in Mac OS X

Repairing the permissions of a home folder in Lion is a complicated procedure. I don’t know of a simpler one that always works.

Launch the Terminal application in any of the following ways:

☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)

☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.

☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Terminal in the page that opens.

Drag or copy — do not type — the following line into the Terminal window, then press return:

chmod -R -N ~

The command will take a noticeable amount of time to run. When a new line ending in a dollar sign ($) appears below what you entered, it’s done. You may see a few error messages about an “invalid argument” while the command is running. You can ignore those. If you get an error message with the words “Permission denied,” enter this:

sudo !!

You'll be prompted for your login password, which won't be displayed when you type it. You may get a one-time warning not to screw up.

Next, boot from your recovery partition by holding down the key combination command-R at startup. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.

When the recovery desktop appears, select Utilities ▹ Terminal from the menu bar.

In the Terminal window, enter “resetpassword” (without the quotes) and press return. A Reset Password window opens. You’re not going to reset the password.

Select your boot volume if not already selected.

Select your username from the menu labeled Select the user account if not already selected.

Under Reset Home Directory Permissions and ACLs, click the Reset button.

Select  ▹ Restart from the menu bar.

After backing up, you should be able to delete the "Mail Lost+Found" folder. Your other question should be posted in the Pages forum on this site.