How to restore email-Account with Time-Machine

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Level 1

10 points

How to restore email-Account with Time-Machine

Hi,

I realized to my surprise that all my email accounts except the icloud one are gone from mail, after I restarted my mac. I do not know why this happened, crash or something ... - I only know that I only see my icloud account in the inbox.

I read the discussions about restoring mails with TM but what I wanted to avoid is to setup my 5 emails accounts manually again. I want to have them restored via TM (as I already have local copies after them emails in the inboxes I do not really care abouut the mails agains..) . I do not want to setup all the different acount settings again and again.

So the question is: Where are those account informations kept in TM? Can I restore them with mail open or do I ahve to close the mail app on my iMac and then simply restore a certain file/folder with TM (I hope it is such easy ...)

Thanks for support!

Christoph

iMac 24'', Mac OS X (10.7)

Posted on Sep 29, 2013 4:03 AM

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Answer 1

Oct 10, 2017 3:34 PM in response to Alcazzar

Just to post an updated Issue / Question as at Oct 17:

I woke up yesterday morning, turned on the Macbook Pro, just to find that my email accounts (excluding icloud) had just disappeared from Mail (although still showed in 'Accounts' I think). Super strange, of course massively annoying as I spent the whole day trying to fix it. For some reason, even attempts to 'start from scratch' and download all emails from server again seemed to fail, as Mail kept downloading and downloading, without knowing when to stop.

Here's my beef: Why not a simple 'restore from TM' option? Going into Mail and entering TM from there just restores your Inboxes to a new Time Machine folder in Mail. What's the point of that? How about just taking me back to the prior state, isn't that what backups are for?

In this case I don't see an option but to try and re-build Mail from scratch, assuming I can get that right. Simply deleting ~Library/Mail isn't enough, so I guess I have to delete all the preferences and other folders as well. Mac is literally becoming more complicated and prone to error than my PC, and that's a scary sign of the times for Mac as far as I'm concerned.

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Answer 2

Nov 4, 2017 2:42 AM in response to Tony T1

I wasn't able to do this through entering TM from toolbar (it seemed unable to search through hidden files, which Library was). I had to do it manually through Finder, having first followed a You-tube telling me how to unhide folders. (Mac OS X Yosemite - How to show/hide hidden files and folders - YouTube)

But knowing the name of the file from this thread, I was able to search and find it, then looked in it and saw the names of my accounts - so copied it from the most recent TM backup, and then pasted it into the corresponding folder on the HD. Lo and behold! all my subfolders, containing 8 emails accounts, have reappeared! :-) :-)

Thanks a lot

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Answer 3

Alcazzar Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 30, 2013 9:23 AM in response to Alcazzar

No one can help? May be I give a little bit different question: In which file of the apple mail application are the account settings stored? If I would know that may be I can restore that file using TimeMachine and fix the problem that way..

Please help!!

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Answer 4

Alcazzar Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 30, 2013 9:33 AM in response to Alcazzar

hmm,

under /Volumes/User/Users/chris/Library/Application Support/Mail/OnlineAccountTypes I could find a file with some settings, but replacing that with an older version did not work.

On the other hand in the /Volumes/User/Users/chris/Library/Mail there are several file and folder that look like my old setup - but my mail app does not seem to recognize them ...

Any ideas??

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Answer 5

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Sep 30, 2013 11:02 AM in response to Alcazzar

Give this a look:

http://computerizer.biz/how-to-restore-mail-account-settings-in-mountain-lion-ma c-os-x/

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Answer 6

Alcazzar Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 30, 2013 1:17 PM in response to Tony T1

Hi Tony,

thanks for the support so far: I followed the steps but at some pont during restore it says, that the process could not be finished because I do not have the proper permissions for „.mboxCache.plist“ ...

I tried to empty the V2 folder completely and then to restore but the error occured again.

And Now?

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Answer 7

Alcazzar Author

Level 1

10 points

Sep 30, 2013 1:39 PM in response to Alcazzar

I was able to restore the V" folder to another drive and then copy it to the original location.

When I started the mail app it said it was importing 4716 mails. That worked fine....

Unfortunately in the inbox I can still see only my icloud account, not the .gmail .web.de or some other .me account I set up. Do I really have to enter all those mailbox account settings again??

Is there no file around that contains those settings??

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Answer 8

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Sep 30, 2013 3:48 PM in response to Alcazzar

The account settings are stored in ~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData/Accounts.plist

So try again with Time Machine.

Browse to the MailData Folder, open Time Machine (click in the toolbar

and select Enter Time Machine) the go back to a time before the Accounts.plist file was changed and click Restore.

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Answer 9

Alcazzar Author

Level 1

10 points

Oct 1, 2013 9:37 AM in response to Tony T1

That worked !!

Thank you so much !!!

Christoph

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Answer 10

Tony T1

Level 6

10,247 points

Oct 1, 2013 9:53 AM in response to Alcazzar

Great!

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Answer 11

Jun 6, 2015 2:58 AM in response to Tony T1

Thank you so much, this information really helped me too!

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Answer 12

Oct 29, 2015 10:52 AM in response to IPHPublishServiceFacebook

I have managed to delete an email account which I would like to restore. Has the location of the file changed in OS X 10.11.1.? I restored a file from the user folder but it do not restore the account settings.

I managed to get the Inbox emails back via time machine but I am having problems restoring the settings.

Thanks

David

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Answer 13

stilbite

Level 1

9 points

Apr 1, 2016 6:38 AM in response to Alcazzar

THANKS for posting this.. I had a major problem when mail lost all my account details and this helped!

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Answer 14

Aug 6, 2016 12:47 PM in response to Alcazzar

One comment for others, if you can't see your library folder inside your user folder, use the go folder command under the go command in finder. This same hint also works in 10.10 & 10.9 (probably older OS's too) Now I couldn't do it thru restore like they said, because I don't know how to make that hidden folder show in time machine, but if you don't use time machine application and you just go into your time machine backups.backupdb folder on your time machine backup drive, you can manually navigate to your user folder and then use the 'go to folder' command under the go menu in finder.

Wow, thanks so much to those who posted. After my new phone, I had to activate using keychain in iCloud which then promptly moved all my email accounts to my wives computer ARGH and deleted them all off my computer... AAAaaah what madness, who at apple thought that would be useful. So I got my accounts deleted from my wives computer, but obviously I'd like to have my email accounts back. Fortunately for this answer I had, everything still on my computer except 1 mail accounts stuff (which I pulled from time machine, lost 4 days oh well, and really all the mail is still on mail server, it's just not organized in the folders the way I had it on my mac). I replaced the messed up accounts.plist file and wammo everything is back. I was willing to do a full restore from time machine if needed, knowing I might lose stuff I did in the last 4 days, although I could've replace from a clone I made, but this was much better and really fixed the problem.

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