In a hurry to clear some space I inadvertently deleted my emails on my MacBook in one of my accounts. I want to use my online backup to retrieve them but I don't where to find them. Where does Mac store Gmail messages? If I can find that I can find them in my backup archive and restore them. I think. Thanks!
IMac G5, Mac OS X (10.4.6)
Mail is stored in your Home Library folder. If it isn't shown in your user account, open a Finder window. Select your home folder in the sidebar and in the menu, View, then View Options. Check the box to show your Library Folder.
The path will be ~/Library/Mail/V2/
Depending on how you have the gmail account setup, mailboxes will be listed either in the gmail account folder or mailboxes folder if they were stored locally.
If you just deleted messages from the inbox, they should still be in the trash depending on your trash setting. You might also check at the gmail webmail site and see if the messages exist there. Depending on the settings there, check the All Mail Folder or Archived folder.
Mail is stored in your Home Library folder. If it isn't shown in your user account, open a Finder window. Select your home folder in the sidebar and in the menu, View, then View Options. Check the box to show your Library Folder.
The path will be ~/Library/Mail/V2/
Depending on how you have the gmail account setup, mailboxes will be listed either in the gmail account folder or mailboxes folder if they were stored locally.
If you just deleted messages from the inbox, they should still be in the trash depending on your trash setting. You might also check at the gmail webmail site and see if the messages exist there. Depending on the settings there, check the All Mail Folder or Archived folder.
Thanks Glenn. I deleted the contents of the Archive folder. I did not actually delete any emails from my inbox but they disappeared when my phone updated/synched with my computer. I did go to Gmail online and oddly there were about 50 emails in the "All Mail" folder, some of which look like emails I had already deleted before the big accidental purge. There were also about 7,000+ emails in the trash, which I know I already deleted in the normal course of things. Still could not find the emails from my inbox. Thanks.
The Archive folder in Mail is where gmail's All Mail Folder exists. It shows emails for the account no matter which mailbox they are in. So, actually the message there could have had an Inbox tag which is why they disappeared from the inbox when you deleted them. If you deleted it completely to where it doesn't show in the All Mail Folder, then it probably has been deleted for good. However, they will probably still exist in gmail's trash at their webmail site. Of course this also depends on setting there. If gmail is set to archive messages upon deletion, then they may be in an archive folder at the gmail site. Gmail has some crazy features and usually the last step in to put it in their trash folder at the site for 30 days.
Thanks. I'll explore the Gmail online site more completely. But if I don't find success there, the key question is, assuming that I am backing up my email with my backup vendor (I think I am), where do I find those emails. Is that what you meant by "Mail is stored in your Home Library folder. If it isn't shown in your user account, open a Finder window. Select your home folder in the sidebar and in the menu, View, then View Options. Check the box to show your Library Folder. The path will be ~/Library/Mail/V2/"?
Thanks.
That's how it's stored on the computer. I don't know what or how you are backing up. Are you backing up your user account as a whole? If so, that's the pathway to find your messages.
Do you have a Time Machine backup? If so, while in the Mail application, enter TM. Then go back in time to a date before the mishap occurred. The messages should appear. Select them and hit restore.
Thanks for your help yesterday. I was able to restore the folder "IMAP-rickheeger@imap.gmail.com" which has 2.3 GB of information, which seems like a good sign to me. It was restored to my desktop. I replaced the old folder called "IMAP-rickheeger@imap.gmail.com" with the new one but that still did not restore the emails to my Mail inbox folder. The old folder had about 250 MB in it and the new restored one had 2.3 GB. The path I followed to get to the folder/files to restore was /Library/Mail/V2/IMAP-rickheeger@imap.gmail.com. Any ideas about getting the files/emails back where they were?
Try rebuilding the mail index. Skip the Rebuild Mailboxes and follow the procedures to Repair and Reindex here:
Be sure to Quit Mail first.
http://osxdaily.com/2013/08/01/rebuild-mailbox-reindex-messages-mail-mac-os-x/
Once you move those files out of the Mail folder, restart Mail. It will take a while to reindex the messages, so be patient an wait till it finishes. This will replace your IMAP account in the Mail folder and reindex all your messages.
Once complete, all messages stored at the gmail site will appear in your mailbox.
Any messages missing would have to be assumed as deleted.
That worked as you said it would except that as soon as Gmail synched up with Mail, all the emails disappeared again. On the advice of someone on a Google forum I signed out of Gmail, disconnected from the Internet and tried it again. This time before I reconnected I saved all the emails in a new folder (Mailbox) in Mail. When I reconnected, the emails in my All Mail box disappeared as they did before but the ones in the new folder are still there.
Thanks again. I appreciate all your help!
I wasn't sure what would happen when you synced since you only replaced the account containing the mailboxes and not the files. What you should have done is to replace the whole mail folder from the backup and you probably wouldn't have had that problem. But that worked out ok.
The new mailbox you created is a local mailbox which is why gmail didn't affect it. If you wish to put them back on the server, copy them back to one of the server mailboxes. Once you are satisfied that it's ok, you can delete the mailbox you created. Or, leave them stored locally and off the server.
I does - I just tried it. I created a draft, and did exactly what you did. It disappeared from the Drafts folder but when I clicked on Trash in the Mail sidebar there it was. (It won't be in the System Trash).
If you managed somehow to delete it from the Mail Trash then I'm afraid it's gone: however it's just remotely possible that a recovery program might find it, but it's unlikely and you would really need to have not been using your Mac since you deleted it - the more you use it the more chance of it being overwritten.
You could try FileSalvage - it has a trial mode which will enable you to see but not recover files; it costs $89.95 for a fully working version. The file will appear as 'emix' followed by a number (at least it does in Snow Leopard, I don't remember whether it's different in Leopard), but there will one of these for every email you ever deleted which has not been overwritten and there is no way to know which is your draft unless you can do it by date - I don't know whether FileSalvage can do that. It's a lot of cost and hassle with, I'm afraid, a low chance of success.
Need to Restore Deleted Emails -- Where does Mac store Gmail Messages?
