kernow3cbv

Q: Lost all saved mail in mailboxes after upgrade to Sierra

All saved mail in mailboxes has disappeared, help please

Posted on Sep 21, 2016 4:19 AM

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Q: Lost all saved mail in mailboxes after upgrade to Sierra

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  • by Newbie1958,

    Newbie1958 Newbie1958 Sep 30, 2016 7:37 AM in response to lbcliff
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Sep 30, 2016 7:37 AM in response to lbcliff

    I've tried all of the above recommendations to no avail. Hierarchical mailboxes and contents are still no HD, but neither the mailbox nor their contents show up in Mail. I've reindexed and imported: no change. I find no "Disable Filter" under "View" (which doesn't sound like it fits my situation anyway). Two senior advisors at Apple are stumped. Waiting for engineering to review the logs.

     

    This is crippling! Already looking into alternatives to Mail going forward. The problem is, I can't seem to import to them unless the emails show up in the Mail app. Are they lost forever in suspended animation; only viewable by clicking through 10,000 email files one at a time?

  • by collumend,

    collumend collumend Sep 30, 2016 10:08 AM in response to Newbie1958
    Level 1 (21 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 30, 2016 10:08 AM in response to Newbie1958

    In despair I tried to roll back, via a timemachine back up to the stare before I triggered the upgrade. However while TM did restore my system drive (a small SSD drive) in would not restore my user folder which was on a internal second HDD. After lots of effort to fix this and get my account  back to the pre Sierra state, an Apple support person has told me that TM does not support /users folders on a second drive and that is why it will not restore and is pprobably what caused my mail box problems in the first case.

     

    If true I think it is very bad that Apple do not make this very clear, as relying on (in my case 2) TM back up disks for safety turns out to be serious folly. My set up worked fine for years.. so I don't see why El Capitan and now Sierra should break this.

     

    Do any of you have a similar set up?

     

    I am now, with the intermittent help of the same tech support person, trying to  re join my account and system together on the HDD with a view he says to moving it and my home folder and things like Library to the SSD leaving data files but not the Library  Time will tell if I can get my emails back...

  • by IcyMacl,

    IcyMacl IcyMacl Oct 7, 2016 12:18 AM in response to kernow3cbv
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 7, 2016 12:18 AM in response to kernow3cbv

    Well here we are again, after all the Mail problems of El Capitan!  I have this issue as well and will be contacting support to try to fix it.  May be nested mailboxes or just the volume, but it's going to be a pain if I can't get mail which was stored On My Mac back very soon....  Please keep posting anyone who finds a solution.  Thanks. 

  • by S. Huggins,

    S. Huggins S. Huggins Oct 10, 2016 7:42 PM in response to lbcliff
    Level 1 (9 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 10, 2016 7:42 PM in response to lbcliff

    I just saw this thread, tried it and it didn't work for me. Any other suggestions out there?

  • by IcyMacl,

    IcyMacl IcyMacl Oct 10, 2016 11:08 PM in response to kernow3cbv
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 10, 2016 11:08 PM in response to kernow3cbv

    I spent a bit of time with Apple support and we tried to troubleshoot this.  I have a TimeMachine back up so we attempted to wind back Mail to a point before the upgrade to access the saved mail.  Sadly, TimeMachine crashes on attempting to recover Mail to a point before the upgrade, so that does not seem to work.  I have another call scheduled for this afternoon, let's see where this goes. 

     

    Not looking good at this point, but I can advise that the files which make up the old mail all seem to be on my Mac and so (in principle) it should be possible to recover.  We just need a fix. 

  • by financialtechnologygroup,

    financialtechnologygroup financialtechnologygroup Oct 11, 2016 1:12 AM in response to IcyMacl
    Level 1 (15 points)
    Mac App Store
    Oct 11, 2016 1:12 AM in response to IcyMacl

    I created a completely new Mail installation and tried reimporting all the old mailboxes. The majority of my emails did then appear but there were still some issues where the index had lost the link to the actual mail so you could see the heading in the list, and even the summary of a few lines, but clicking on it resulted in an empty mail window.

     

    It would appear Apple is in need of a tool to rebuild the mailbox library to reconnect the index entry with the original mail. I would guess the 'rebuild' function should do this but after my last experience where it made things worse i'm loathed to try it. I suspect that once the index gets corrupted beyond a certain point the tools we have available just aren't up to the job.

  • by Dott. Enzo_Vincenzo,

    Dott. Enzo_Vincenzo Dott. Enzo_Vincenzo Oct 11, 2016 5:03 AM in response to kernow3cbv
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 11, 2016 5:03 AM in response to kernow3cbv

    Hi, kernow3cbv! and peaceful... because although Sierra not import and doesn't see, ALL your e-mails are still in your-home/Library/Mail/ folder.

     

    If you have POP account, I think that exists only this trick...

    I restored from Time Machine at El Capitan and I exported, from Mail, in an external folder, all the Inbox, Outbox and Draft of my Mail Accounts. [Note that Mail.app exports as folder "*.mbox"].

    So! I updated to macOS Sierra and I re-imported one at time the various Mailboxes, exported as ".mbox".

    Do not import as Mail format !

     

    At end, you can delete the V3 folder that persists in Your-Home/Library/Mail/, leaving only the new V4 folder, to free space in the disc.

     

    If you want, you can re-ordinate the POP Accounts dragging the e-mails imported...

    If you did not have a backup, maybe you can try to import the various *.mbox boxes that are in your-home/Library/Mail/. But I do not remember if I tried and did not work...

     

    Regards,

    Vincenzo

  • by lbcliff,

    lbcliff lbcliff Oct 11, 2016 6:18 AM in response to kernow3cbv
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 11, 2016 6:18 AM in response to kernow3cbv

    Sierra has a new (deadly) feature in Mail called Quick Filter. Some info here in MacWorld article:

     

    http://www.macworld.com/article/3122961/macs/7-hidden-features-in-macos-sierra-y ou-may-have-missed.html#slide3

     

    I use Classic View in Mail, so the settings don't show up in the mail window. Open a mailbox folder with missing mail. Go to View and look for "Disable Message Filter," select it. Hopefully, your mail will reappear. Mine did. I had to Disable the filter for every folder (mailbox).

     

    The deadly aspect of this feature for me is the Keyboard Shortcut is Command-L to "Enable Message Filter." Well, Command-L is also the shortcut for Open Location in Safari, and I use that all the time. It's very easy to engage it in Mail by mistake (thinking Safari is the active window, when it's really mail). Apparently, the Safari and Mail development teams don't talk to each other. I've reported this to a senior tech at Apple.

  • by IcyMacl,

    IcyMacl IcyMacl Oct 11, 2016 11:01 AM in response to kernow3cbv
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 11, 2016 11:01 AM in response to kernow3cbv

    I spent a few happy minutes with Apple support this afternoon trying to fix this.  After re-installing the Sierra operating system I still have the problem.  The files are still there in a V2 folder, but nothing On My Mac is appearing. 

     

    I have another call back tomorrow morning and will post again if there is anything to report.  The rebuild tool which financialtechnologygroup mentions sounds like it would be something to work on....  So far, this has been very inconvenient.  Soon it will be a very major problem, as I need to access my old messages.  Crippling, as mentioned by newbie1958 is not an understatement.... 

  • by lbcliff,

    lbcliff lbcliff Oct 11, 2016 11:24 AM in response to IcyMacl
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 11, 2016 11:24 AM in response to IcyMacl

    IcyMaci - Did you read my post from this morning?

     

    Open a mailbox folder with missing mail. Go to View and look for "Disable Message Filter," select it. Hopefully, your mail will reappear. Mine did. I had to Disable the filter for every folder (mailbox).

     

    The deadly aspect of this feature for me is the Keyboard Shortcut is Command-L to "Enable Message Filter." Well, Command-L is also the shortcut for Open Location in Safari, and I use that all the time. It's very easy to engage it in Mail by mistake (thinking Safari is the active window, when it's really mail). Apparently, the Safari and Mail development teams don't talk to each other. I've reported this to a senior tech at Apple.

     

    Here's a MacWorld article about the new feature called Quick Filter.

     

    http://www.macworld.com/article/3122961/macs/7-hidden-features-in-macos-sierra-y ou-may-have-missed.html#slide3

     

    I use Classic View in Mail, so the settings don't show up in the mail window.

  • by Newbie1958,

    Newbie1958 Newbie1958 Oct 11, 2016 12:03 PM in response to Newbie1958
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Notebooks
    Oct 11, 2016 12:03 PM in response to Newbie1958

    Update. 

    While working with a third tier-two Apple Support person, this procedure brought my emails back, although I had to do clean up afterwards. (I'm trusting your basic computer skills, as I cannot remember every minute step.)

     

    Getting them back:

    1) Close Mail

    2) Open Library in Finder

    3) Move entire "Mail" folder and subfolders to your desktop.

    4) Reboot computer

    5) Open Mail -- which will then want to proceed to rebuild the entire mail file system.

    6) Follow directions until you must identify what mail you want to import (or something like that). Select the "Mailbox" subfolder within the relocated "Mail" folder.

    7) Wait for Mail to rebuild.

     

    Notes:

    a. My relocated "Mail" folder included the following subfolders: "Bundles", "Mailboxes", "V2" and "V4". "Mailboxes" contained mailboxes as I had named them.

    b. The reconstituted "Mail" folder now has these subfolders: "Bundles" and "V4".

    c. The "V4" contains subfolders with long alpha-numeric string names: e.g. 298349BA-D3CB-4961-B167-B7DDECF8DED7.  (This particular folder now contains the "on my mac" saved emails.) Other similarly names folders seem to related to other email accounts being serviced through Mail.

    d. I am not confident that my original file system has been entirely rebuilt or that all my emails are there. But I am convinced that most if not all are there.

     

    Cleaning things up:

    1) When Mail reopened, I found the "on my Mac" email folders had returned -- although not perfectly reproduced.

    2) Within each folder I found that my subfolders had been replaced by numeric designations (e.g. "0", "1", "2" etc. -- for nearly all of the previously named folders.  Each layer also included an alpha-numerically named subfolder that contained a duplicate email of what was contained in its parent.

    3) Folder by folder, I confirmed the presence of emails in the parent folder before deleting the duplicates in the subfolders.

    4) Then I polished up folder names as best I could.

    5) Again, the structure is not as complete as it was before, but most of it was there.

     

    Hope this helps.

  • by IcyMacl,

    IcyMacl IcyMacl Oct 11, 2016 2:19 PM in response to lbcliff
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    Oct 11, 2016 2:19 PM in response to lbcliff

    Thanks, Ibcliff.  Alas, it is not just a matter of the message filter.  I have no folders whatsoever, of any kind, on my Mac.  The rebuilding of the mailbox upon conversion has just failed completely and there are no folders there at all.  So it is definitely not just a filter which is reducing the messages being displayed. 

     

    I think I may end up doing something like what Newbie1958 has had to do, but it's going to be very messy if I have to try this approach.  I have about 37 Gb of mail with thousands of messages in hundreds of folders, some of them nested down four or five levels.  It will take a long time to clean up manually!  Let's see what tomorrow's call brings.... 

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