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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Recover Mail In Mac Osx Mail(tiger) After Removing Account

s1peck - Jul 14, 2005 - 4:31 am

I had to remove an account in macosx-tiger mail. Unfortunatly all the mail associated with that account has gone. Can I get it back into the new account?

Cheers

S1peck

aajoyce - Jul 14, 2005 - 11:23 am

Hi,

So, you're facing the old "let's delete this thing right now.... oh, oh, I didn't save the mailboxes first...... Bummer!" You see, I've been there myself.

Apple's mail program saves its mailboxes in the user's library. Go to your hard drive, click it open, go to the Users Folder and click it open. Then go to User where where you deleted the account and click that user open. Then open the Library folder, then the Mail folder, and then the mailboxes folder. IF that folder is empty, there isn't much you can do, short of using a file recovery program. And with a recovery program you might be successful IF you haven't already copied other files over the space. With a recovery program you would search for files with a name of .mbox - The name of the mailbox is put before the .mbox (for example I have a mailbox called Banking. The Mail program records that as Banking.mbox in the Mailboxes folder. The specific mbox folder holds the actual files.

If you still have those files you can drag them into the new account that you have set up and they'll show up just fine.

Good luck and sorry for the mess.

Art

s1peck - Jul 14, 2005 - 12:15 pm

Art,

many thnaks for taking the time to reply. Unfortunatly I seem to have lost the mail as the new account is named the same as the old one, I figure that makes a difference.

Cheers

simon

aajoyce - Jul 14, 2005 - 3:50 pm

Yes, I believe you're right. So sorry. IF you ever need to do this again, just remember to move those mailboxes (or the entire mailboxes folder) out of the library.

I'm wondering, however, why you needed to delete an account and then make another with the same name. You needn't respond but I'm just curious. If there were settings that were incorrect you could have just renamed them. Oh well, just wondering.

Hope your day goes better than it has.

Art

s1peck - Jul 19, 2005 - 2:22 pm

I had tried to get the smtp mail to work after upgrading to tiger but it wouldn't even after I fiddled with the settings. The only thing to work was a delete and re enter (i need the same name as it is my wifes business email).

So in summery, after upgrading to tiger i couldnt send mail (SMTP), but could receive (POP). Editing the account didn't work, but delete and re-enter did. I guess I could have created a new one, and moved the mail, deleted the old one, then renamed the new. Pretty weird that if you delete the mail account all mail goes as well? Oh hum, that's life...