Apple Mail deleted in-progress messages

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Apple Mail deleted in-progress messages

I was composing a long and complex email in Apple Mail, never explicitly saved it as a draft, and then accidentally deleted it. Any advice for a distraught idiot?

Apple Mail-OTHER, Mac OS X (10.7.1)

Posted on Dec 8, 2012 6:53 PM

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Answer 1

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Csound1

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Dec 8, 2012 8:03 PM in response to teeks.m

Look in the trash, and in future compose long and complex emails in TextEdit, then paste them in your mail. It's safer.

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Answer 2

teeks.m Author

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Dec 9, 2012 7:27 PM in response to Csound1

It wasn't in the trash. I can't believe there's no auto-save feature for when you are composing an email. In the future I'll follow your tip and compose in a different application.

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Answer 3

Dec 9, 2012 7:37 PM in response to teeks.m

It does save regularly in the Drafts folder and also should autosave new messages as part of Lion's "Resume" feature, but these depend to an extent on how the message was handled.

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Answer 4

teeks.m Author

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Dec 9, 2012 8:20 PM in response to Topher Kessler

For me, it only saves in the drafts folder, if I explicitely close the email that I'm in progress on, and then click Save this email as a draft in the pop-up that appears when I close it. Is there a setting that I can change to make it auto-save in Drafts as I'm composing? I'm using Mail 5.3 in 10.7.5.

Thanks!

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Answer 5

Csound1

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Dec 9, 2012 8:36 PM in response to teeks.m

As far as I know there is no "auto-save" for drafts, although they do seem to hang around in the drafts folder sometimes, sometimes they don't.

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Answer 6

Jun 9, 2015 8:52 PM in response to Csound1

I just lost a long email because i somehow selected it all and hit the space key!!!

It was all gone. I tried undo. nothing.

Then i tried the control key and the Z key together. It all came back! Yeah!

I guess on apple your hit the command plus Z

but I have an hp so it was control plus z.

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