Time machine not restoring email file

Although you can restore messages from a Time Machine snapshot within the Mail application, it generally won't work with messages that were saved by an older version of Mail. In that case, you have to use an alternative method.

Hello Linc,

I'm sorry, but you answer seems rather a tricky workaround than a real solution. Although it works, most surely TimeMachine isn't supposed to work like that! At least it should not...

I have exactly the same problem here and it has nothing to do with the version of Mail.app used when your data got backed up. I'm using ML since day one but when I try to recover a mail form last month the "official Apple way" through Mail.app, after clicking the "Recover" button, nothing happens. There should appear a folder "TimeMachine" in Mail.app's sidebar, but nothing happens! Looks like a bug to me. Has anyone found a solution for this?

Thanks,

Werner

Thanks Linc, your advice worked for me, but I agree with Werner - this is a bug in Time Machine and we shouldn't have to resort to restoring mailbox files then importing them to get round it.

I deleted an e-mail account prematurely just a few days ago, and haven't updated Mail or anything like that in the meantime.

I was able to find the old mailbox in Time Machine, hit the restore button, Time Machine exits and a box appears stating 'Restoring Mailbox', but then it goes away and.. nothing - no folders created in Mail or anywhere else with restored messages.

Apple need to fix this or provide some advice.

Tim.

Mail does exit after being done restoring your mail. It is a bug BUT mail has been restored. Try making a smart mailbox. Use the criteria . "Contains all messages that match 'ALL' of the following conditions" select "Message is in Mailbox" scroll to "On my Mac" there you will see a folder "Time Machine" containing your restored emails/folders.

After closing your new smart selection you will see the recoverd messages.

All you have to do now is create a new mailbox and move the found messages from your smart selection.

I had the same issue. Wow. That was much easier than re-importing. Thanks Rembo.

I would love to know where that time machine folder is on the mac so I can clear it out.

Chuck

Rembo's trick was easy and helps some, but I'm not sure how much good it really did for me. After an email meltdown yesterday, I attempted Time Machine recoveries three times of an Inbox from one email account and got nowhere. The box had nearly 10,000 emails, so I thought it had overwhelmed Time Machine, and instead imported the email files buried in the Library folder of an external clone of the hard disk. Cumbersome, but it got the missing emails.

Today I tried Rembo's trick and found that the "Time Machine" folder actually contained three folders -- one called Recovery, a second called INBOX and a third called INBOX-1. I used separate Smart Mailboxes to import all three, and found that the first one (from Recovery) recovered a few mails (making it look like a partial recovery I tried and abandoned), and the last two recovered the same large numbers of mails. But the second two recoveries pretty much matched those from the Import. Neither seems to have captured SENT mail although I asked for it in the second case.

Were the folders inside the Time Machine folder from the three different recovery attempts? This all seems a rather odd way to do things.