How to manually retrieve mail messages from time machine in Lion?

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Level 1

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How to manually retrieve mail messages from time machine in Lion?

I just did a clean reinstall on Lion and want to import things from time machine piecemeal. As far as I know, in order to access the mail documents on the computer's hard drive, in the Finder I need to go to Go-->Go to Folder... and then type ~/Library. Then I have access to the "Mail" folder with the data. How can I access this folder that's on my external harddrive? I don't have the "Go" function and I don't know how to get there manually. My hidden files are shown.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5)

Posted on Dec 8, 2012 11:00 PM

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Answer 1

mende1

Level 10

93,624 points

Dec 8, 2012 11:04 PM in response to amateur3

Welcome to the Apple Support Communities

The best way to restore mails is to use Time Machine.

1. Open System Preferences > Time Machine > Select Disk, select the external disk and see > http://pondini.org/TM/E3.html

2. Open Mail and open Time Machine. Navigate and restore the mails you want

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Answer 2

amateur3 Author

Level 1

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Dec 8, 2012 11:21 PM in response to mende1

Thank you. I'm trying to follow the instructions but it looks like to restore I need to choose a particular folder or file to restore. It will not allow me to restore the "Library" folder, but what I really want is to just restore the "Mail" folder with all the data. However, I cannot find this folder in the time machine backup.

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