iCloud Mail Folder disappeared! help!

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iCloud Mail Folder disappeared! help!

Today a folder I created years ago to organize iCloud email on my Mac was at first empty then disappeared completely. I went to iCloud and the folder was there but empty, then also disappeared while I was looking at the screen.

Time Machine showed very few emails in the folder until 3 weeks back when there are thousands, but only thru end of January 2017.

So i can't recover the contents of the folder from iCloud or TM. I have a CCC bootable backup that I'll look at later to see if maybe that has the missing emails and if so if I can figure out how to get them out of there.

Apple Chat couldn't answer the question, said they would have Mail department call me, the phone rang, but it was not an email specialist. I started explaining and realized the connection had dropped. Apple hasn't yet called back so I guess they were not interested in helping. I've had calls before where they ask the phone number and actually do call back if they have to research or connection breaks etc. (voip in use).

More background:

10.12.6 Sierra; Mail 10.3, iCloud email account, in use trouble free for years. Recently notified my 5GB storage was nearly full so Rebuilt all my Mailboxes and dragged thousands of old emails to new folders set up in On My Mac in the Mail app. The folder OMM matching the missing one in iCloud has only the mail I dragged to it thru December 2017 so I'm only trying to recover email from 2018.

So does anyone know how to access iCloud email backups that Apple might have? can't find the option in iCloud. You can restore older files, contacts etc but nothing shown for Mail.

Any ideas why TM would glitch on backing up a Mail folder? that is, I confirmed after all the dragging of older mail, that my mail from this year was there. But it's now not in TM, which shows same 3-6 emails for the last 2 weeks of backups. I put mail in that folder almost daily.

Any idea how to find the folder on a Mac in Finder? so I can poke thru the bootable backup looking for it...

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5)

Posted on Mar 18, 2018 7:31 AM

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Answer 1

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Eric Root

Level 10

684,675 points

Mar 18, 2018 11:30 AM in response to Daver

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library/Mail/V4.

Try re-indexing the mailboxes. This can take awhile if you have a lot of mail. Since it wasn't at iCloud.com/Mail, it may not work, but is something to try.

Reindex messages For El Capitan, try looking in V3. Sierra use V4. High Sierra use V5.

Reindex messages (2) See post by Linc Davis

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Answer 2

Daver Author

Level 1

39 points

Mar 18, 2018 12:50 PM in response to Eric Root

Hello Eric Root;

the reindex messages link goes to a Spotlight page. Is that what you intended? I don't use Spotlight to search Mail, but do it within Mail itself, and it works fine without the Mail checkbox checked in Spotlight. Don't know what you mean with the text after the link "Reindex messages"--there is no reference on the linked page to V3/4/5 etc.

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Answer 3

Daver Author

Level 1

39 points

Mar 21, 2018 7:44 AM in response to Daver

I thought I earlier saw a way to edit posts but now cannot find it so am Replying to my message.

Reached Apple by phone again, passed to senior advisor, the only thing they could suggest is resetting the account.

Says Apple doesn't maintain 'snapshots' so to speak of Mail, couldn't explain why a folder would disappear, could not roll back that folder to a specific time. Also noted that Time Machine doesn't really back up Mail-it only reflects what is on the server. Since I had moved a lot of my mail from server to local mac as a precaution, Time Machine could not restore any mail; it also apparently does not keep a 'snapshot' of Mail, as Time Machine does with other contents of the Mac's storage.

So I moved all the mail in iCloud to local OMM and let the rep reset the account. Several hundred emails repopulated and I reviewed them in iCloud in Safari. Couldn't find much from the missing time period so whatever the glitch was, that email is gone. Deleted the rest of what had reappeared and moved a few emails back on to the servers.

Decided I don't really need the advantages of IMAP and multiple devices that much anyway so will going forward treat iCloud mail in effect like a POP account. Will keep very little on the server and file mail I want to keep On My Mac as soon as possible. Will delete more mail going forward. Will only look at mail on my other devices, not create it delete it or anything exc in unusual circumstances.

Will also be making sure my Mac has multiple backups now that the Mac is again the hub of email activity.

the bootable backup was no help in this case, as it was a copy of only the most recent state, which was without the missing mail folder.

Hope that helps someone down the road. bye.

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Answer 4

Eric Root

Level 10

684,675 points

Mar 19, 2018 3:28 PM in response to Daver

See the 2nd link -Linc Davis's post.

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iCloud Mail Folder disappeared! help!

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