Backing Up Mail to Time Machine?

Time Machine has been backing up to an external hard drive (WD Passport) for a couple of weeks. I am now trying to find and old email I sent, via Time Machine. When I open Time Machine while in Mail, I only see today's date. Is there a way for me to access old emails or does Time Machine not backup Mail? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Hi Amy,
Only thing I can suggest is to try the Free Trial version of Back-in-Time, which makes it easy to find what you need in TM...
http://www.tri-edre.fr/english/backintime.html

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  • How restore aol sent mac mail from time machine?

    I am using mac mail and an imap connection to aol.  I also have a time capsule and use time machine for backing up. Yesterday I stopped receiving incoming mail in mac mail and tried deleting the aol account in mac mail and then setting it up fresh.  I was shocked to find that my 25,000 AOL sent emails did not restore! I was told by an apple genius bar rep several months ago that once mail was on my machine that the emails would NEVER be lost.  Apparently this is not true.  When I open mac mail and go into my time capsule using time machine, however, do not see the SENT mail icon under AOL--it goes away?  When I try to restore the aol mail from the day before the incident the only thing that comes up is the one Sent Mail mssg that I sent AFTER the deleting and restoring of my AOL account in mac mail. The only relevant post I have found is the one below which was posted in 2008.  Please let me know there is a way to get back my sent messages.  I can't get them directly from the aol server because the server does not save messages that are sent from any client but AOL. Thanks.
    http://raffyjohn.com/2008/01/29/restoring-apple-mail-and-your-emails-from-time-m achine/
    Restoring Apple Mail and Your Emails from Time Machine
    filed under: How-To tags: mail, timemachine Tuesday, January 29, 2008, 11:31 am
    UPDATE (25 August 2010): Please note that this post is well over 2 years old and as Tim pointed out in the comments below, this method may not be the best solution for restoring emails. According to his restore efforts, changes where made to the timestamp from the date in which they were received to the date in which they were restored. I have not tested this myself.
    The hard drive on my PowerBook completely died the other day, but I luckily had been running Time Machine backups since upgrading to Leopard. (I wasn’t all that ****** off seeing as I was eager for an excuse to replace my wimpy 40Gb hard drive with a new 160Gb drive). I fumbled a bit, looking for a specific Apple Mail restore tool. I knew where all my emails lived, but I thought that Apple would have a specific means for restoring apps like Mail. So I created this mini-tutorial on how to restore Apple Mail from Time Machine simply because I could not find this method elsewhere.
    Supposedly, If you attach your Time Machine backup drive, open Apple Mail then launch the Time Machine application, you are presented with historical views of Apple Mail. This did not work for me, the historical views were just blank, so the steps below do not take this approach.
    Restoring Your Emails from a Time Machine Backup
    Warning: If you have already setup Apple Mail with your accounts and preferences, this will negate ALL your doings.
    Note: This process will restore all your email accounts, preferences, passwords, smart mailboxes, etc.
    The How-To
    Before loading Time Machine, open the Finder and navigate to Home Folder (username) -> Library. In there will be a folder name “Mail”. Rename it to “Mail (default)” (Select the folder then hit the Return key to rename).
    Mount your Time Machine Backup Drive (ahem, plug it in).
    Control + Click the Time Machine Application and chose “Browse Other Time Machine disks…”. This, of course, brings up the historical view of your backups.
    Go back to your most recent backup (2nd window back) and navigate to Home Folder (username) -> Library. Select the “Mail” folder and click the restore button (bottom right).
    Once the restore is completed, open Apple Mail and you will be presented with an import wizard (below). Simply follow through the prompts and you will be good to go.
    That’s it!UPDATE (20-January-2009): After step 4., also restore ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plistThanks Jon C.
    If you have multiple mail accounts, you should also restore the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist file as well. This will ensure all of your account settings are imported. – Jon C.
    Follow me on Twitter here.
    40 Comments
    Chucho
    May 13th, 2008 at 11:11 amThanks it’s a great hint, you should post it in macosxhints.com
    Westin
    May 19th, 2008 at 3:28 amAwesome content and great instructions even for stupid people like me. Thank you so much for posting this. It worked like a charm and really is appreciated at 2:30 a.m. after hours of reinstalling junk.
    Slippery Snake
    June 23rd, 2008 at 9:15 amThis worked. However, I had three email accounts, and it only imported one. My Smart Mailboxes were not imported either.
    Jon C
    July 30th, 2008 at 2:50 pmIf you have multiple mail accounts, you should also restore the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist file as well. This will ensure all of your account settings are imported.
    Joseph Hurtado
    August 26th, 2008 at 11:23 amRaffy,This tip is worth it’s weight in gold! Thanks so much for posting such a well though out recipe for a Mail Rescue operation.Just put Jon’s advice on the article, that is also very valuable!Take care,Joseph Hurtado
    from Toronto
    Cory
    December 3rd, 2008 at 9:25 amYou saved my life! Thanks!
    Drew
    January 19th, 2009 at 12:08 amCheers Great tip! Thank you very much for your time!
    Lizart
    May 23rd, 2012 at 2:00 pmStill working in May of 2012! Thanks so much!
    source
    May 29th, 2012 at 11:11 amIm getting a teeny problem. I cant get my reader to pick up your feed, Im using bing reader by the way.
    Bruno Zysman
    May 31st, 2012 at 4:56 pmThanks so much for this tips
    I could get back my 170 000 mails in 5 hours thanks to this post, after having tried for few hours without success…Bruno

    Don't try to restore the file; restore the Note. Go in Mail to the mailbox where the note belongs. Enter Time Machine from there and step back until you find the Note.

  • Restore Archived Lion Mail from Time Machine

    I deleted a mailbox, thinking I could add it back, and synch with the server.  That worked fine, but I forgot that I had archived a whole bunch of mail on that account.   Now I want to retrieve the old mail.  I have a fresh Time Machine backup.  How do I retrieve my archived mail from Time Machine for a deleted account?

    If Time Machine was backing up before you deleted the account, you can try to enter Time Machine from
    ~/Library/Mail.  See if the deleted account is in there.

  • How to Search Mail in Time Machine

    Although Mail's search feature isn't active when in Time Machine mode, here's a way I just figured out to search Mail e-mail messages using Time Machine:
    1. In the Finder, initiate a new Spotlight search by choosing Find in the File menu.
    2. In the list of search properties, select Other..., then find System files in the resulting sheet.
    3. Check In Menu if you want it readily accessible in the future, otherwise just click on it and click OK.
    4. To the right of System files, select Include in the list.
    5. Search for the contents, name, date, etc. of the Mail message you're looking for. If it is no longer on your computer (why you're using TM in the first place), it won't show up yet.
    6. Start Time Machine with the search still going. It will search back in time and you will be able to find your old mail messages by content, date, etc.
    I'm not sure if restoring from the Finder view will work, but at least you'll now know what date to go back to when using Mail in Time Machine if you're looking for a specific message, and can then restore from there.
    Hopefully Apple can add search to Mail itself soon, but in the meantime this should work.

    EXTREMELY HELPFUL.... THANKS!!!

  • My HD has been replaced and when backing up from my time machine the transferred got interrupted

    My HD has been replaced and when backing up from my time machine the transferred got interrupted. When Mac book booted only half the data. So I erased the hard drive to start again although I now can't restore from my time machine  as its saying not enough space on HD to restore. Please help coz I'm freaking out!

    I seriously doubt that you can do that. I've never heard of anyone doing something like this. I also strongly suspect that that windows software didn't preserve all the resource fork, ownership and hard links correctly.
    You are left with manual migration of your data back to your computer. this isn't as hard as you make it sound. You just need to copy you own stuff back. also use the following [post|http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6185507] to migrate important parts of you user library, Mail, iphoto etc. You will have to reinstall your applications by hand.

  • Can I back up computer with time machine on lion then reinstall snow leopard and restore from backup safely

    Can I back up computer with time machine on lion then reinstall snow leopard and restore from backup safely?

    If your machine came with Snow Leopard or earlier and you have your install disks, yes, you can reinstall SL. However, you will need to erase the entire hard drive so you will lose all your files. Also note that there are some apps (such as Mail) which can't be downgraded "automatically" such as with a restore from Time Machine. Here is some info on TM:
    http://pondini.org/TM/14.html

  • Mail in Time Machine

    Is there a way to search e-mail in Time Machine? I use Mail and when I start TM to look the search bar in Mail becomes ghosted leaving me with the one solution: look through every folder in every back up manually. Anyone have a suggestion?

    Hi,
    It seems not. It looks like you just have to go back through the various inboxes back in time.
    I tried a global spotlight search without luck.
    If the message was deleted i guess you would select the trash to view and step back until you found the message.
    I hope they deal with that. It would be nice to search back.
    I would put in a feedback note to Apple. I will too.
    Sorry i couldn't help. May be someone has an idea.

  • Blank E-mail after Time Machine Restore

    I recently restored a full user account from a Time Machine backup on a Time Capsule. This was a migration from an older Mac (10.4) to a newer Mac (10.6.4). All folders were backed up using the Time Machine backup.
    When checking the migration of the Mail program's imap account and local folders, everything seems to be perfectly fine except for the fact that there are now approximately 800 blank messages (no sender, subject, body etc) in the Imap inbox.
    Checking with a web client reveals no errant messages. Additionally, the old Mac also shows no blank messages.
    These messages are "sent" with a timestamp matching the time when the Mail app imports the messages. This and the fact that I cannot locate these messages on the server leads me to believe that they are an error in the import process.
    All of the old messages appear, but these additional messages appear as well. They cannot be deleted (the imap server reports that there is a malformed list). When moved to a local folder, they appear to move, but after leaving and re-entering the inbox, they reappear.
    I've rebuilt the envelope index, to no avail.
    Any ideas?

    Thanks for the feedback and star. When you force the reindexing, it is global within the Mail folder, and thus all IMAP and Exchange account folders should be removed, and not merely the one having an issue. Not sure if that is what you meant, but simply clarifying.
    Ernie

  • Search for specific E-mail in Time Machine?

    Hi,
    I have a problem with searching for E-mails in Time Machine.
    When I search for E-mails of a specific address or subject in Mail and can't find it, I enter Time Machine and in Time Machine the "search field" of the mail window is empty and all E-mails are shown.
    I found no way to filter the E-mails and it's difficult to find an E-mail when all E-mails are listed.
    I also can't use a intelligent folder with my search criteria, cause they are greyed out in Time Machine.
    Is this a "normal" behaviour or am I doing something wrong?

    Alex69 wrote:
    Thanks for the answer…
    I thought maybe I'm doing something wrong or this is because i excluded the Time Machine volume from spotlight, but ok, not my fault, but an apple "feature"
    I could search for specific E-mails using a finder search and then switch into Time Machine, but since Mail is called a Time-Machine-Aware Application I felt there should be a direct way to do this in Mail…
    Yes, there "should be a direct way to do this."
    The approach you describe above will work for email that still currently resides on your Mac, for example an email that has been "Replied" back and forth and you wish to retrieve an earlier version of the conversation. Or perhaps a "Draft" email that has undergone changes over time, of which you need to retrieve an earlier version. In these cases using Time Machine is relatively straight forward.
    My problem with Mail/Time Machine is with a specific email that has since been deleted. Unless you know exactly what mailbox that email had been in, and at what time the email had existed, then it can be like searching for a needle in a haystack. In this case the Time Machine interface needs to have a search box added to the "time travel" windows for faster retrieval of specific items, the location of which the user doesn't remember.
    I'm convinced, though, that the usability of Time Machine in such instances will improve over time. Particularly as more app become integrated with it.
    Glenn

  • My external hard drive is 'seen' by my iMac and I can go into the Finder and open files and folders. I am using the hard drive for Time Machine back up. However Time Machine says it can't find the drive. Same thing has happened with Final Cut Express.

    My new LaCie external hard drive is 'seen' by my iMac and I can go into the Finder and open files and folders. I am using the hard drive for Time Machine back up. However Time Machine says it can't find the drive.
    The same thing happened recently between Final Cut Express and my other LaCie external hard drive used as the Scratch disk. It fixed itself.
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    have you done some searches on FCPx and time machine? Is there a known issue with using a TM drive with FCPx? dunno but ...wait...I'll take 60 sec for you cause I'm just that kind of guy....   google...." fcpx time machine problem"  Frist page link 
    http://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/fcpx-bug-best-practices-for-using-external-hard- drives-and-final-cut-pro-x/
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    booya!

  • Where can i find steps to back up iPhone to time machine?

    where can i find steps to back up iPhone to time machine?

    can't back up iPhone to time capsule?  only MACs?
    You can also back up to iCloud.
    See this support document for more details on backups:
    Back up and restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch using iCloud or iTunes - Apple Support

  • How do I back up iPhone to time machine?(I'm new)

    How do I back up iPhone to time machine?(I'm new)

    -Mayor- wrote:
    How do I back up iPhone to time machine?(I'm new)
    If you're new to this, I suggest you read the manual:
    http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/1000/MA1565/en_US/iphone_user_guide.pdf

  • Having downloaded Mavericks to my IMac I now find Time Machine couldn't back up to the Time Machine HDD. I am using a WD 1TB independent Hard drive

    Having downloaded Mavericks to my IMac two weeks ago, I now find Time Machine couldn't back up to the Time Machine HDD. I am using a WD 1TB External Hard drive. I understand that a number of people have lost data since installing Mavericks on their Western Digital external drives. Has anyone any futher info.  Or is there a better way of backing up my computer. Thanks. Lee

    Check the More Like This section at the right particularly i upgraded my imac hard drive to a 2tb drive. how do i use time machine to get my computer back to normal?

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    Two questions today:
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    LeroyHoward wrote: So, does this mean that TM never deletes a file?
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    The newest timeline will not point/display the deleted file(s), but it still exists on the backup until the backup drive fills up and needs to erase deleted data.
    I'm trying to understand this aspect of the TC and TM, because we want to use it as both an external HD and as one of our back-ups. Any light you can shed on this will be greatly appreciated.
    Thanks, LeRoy
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    Glenn Carter wrote:
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    Did you follow the instructions on the page linked below?
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