RexRox
Level 1
(12 points)
Q: Apple Mail deleted all my mail!
On one of our computers Mail was being a bit flaky & not showing the trash.
To try & get the trash to show I deleted a few messages in the outbox & it didn't show. The main user of that computer then said 'oh just delete all the sent messages' (there were over 6k of them...)
So I selected all & hit delete. Nothing. Repeated. Nothing. Gave it a few minutes. Nothing.
Shut Mail down & reopened & went to the Inbox to see if the option was there to show trash &... every single message in the Inbox was gone. Checked Sent & all the messages were still there!!! I then highlighted all in Sent & deleted & they went but...
The Trash box was now showing up but only about 10 of the deleted messages were in it.
There should have been 6k of the sent messages & about 500 from the Inbox.
The accounts are all POP so the mail should have been locally stored.
Where has it all gone?!?!?!?!
iMac, OS X Mavericks (10.9.5), 27-inch, Late 2009, 2.8GHz i7
Linc Davis
Level 10
(207,925 points)
Quit Mail. Force quit if necessary.
Back up all data before proceeding.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Mail/V2/MailData
Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
Go ▹ Go to Folder
from the menu bar. Paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V, then press return.
A folder window will open. Inside it there should be files with names as follows:
Envelope Index
ExternalUpdates.storedata
Move those files to the Desktop, leaving the window open. Other files in the folder may have longer names that begin as above. Move those files, if any, to the Trash.
Relaunch Mail. It should prompt you to re-import your messages. You may get a warning that the index is damaged and that Mail has to quit. Click OK. Typically, the process takes a few minutes, but it may take hours if you have gigantic mailboxes. In that case, you may be able to speed things up by temporarily adding your home folder to the Privacy list in the Spotlight preference pane. Remove it when Mail has finished importing.
Test. If Mail now works as expected, you can delete the files you moved to the Desktop. Otherwise, post your results.
