Can't find old Mail

I recently changed my POPaccount through mail as my server changed hands. After deleting my old account and restting my new one (with the same mail address), I lost all of my old mail that I had been saving up. Is there any way to retrieve those past letters?
G5 Power Mac Mac OS X (10.4.8)

You're welcome.
Time Machine isn't a Tiger feature - this will be included with Leopard expected to be released this spring.
Even with Time Machine, nothing can or should take the place of creating and maintaining a backup of all important data saved to an external drive or media.
It isn't a matter of if but when your hard drive has a partial or complete failure and Time Machine will be of no use depending on the failure and especially with a complete failure which I experienced with a G3 PB less than 1-yr old. Without any warning, I experienced a complete hard drive failure and didn't maintain a backup at the time. Apple replaced the hard drive under the standard 1-yr warranty but no existing data was recovered and I lost everything. Time Machine would not have made any difference in this situation but would have made a difference in your situation but the main point is, nothing should take the place of maintaining a regular backup.

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I recently upgraded the OS on my iBook G4 to Tiger - and performed an archived install just to be safe. After installation was successful, most of my preferences transferred with the upgrade seamlessly (Calendar, Address Book items, bookmarks etc.)
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Help! "You need to take this account online in order to download it."
More specifically, if this is a POP account, the following procedure should allow you to fix the Inbox problem. A similar procedure should allow you to fix other mailboxes that might also be affected:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something goes wrong while trying to fix the problem. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is stored.
3. Create a new folder on the Desktop and name it however you wish (e.g. Inbox Old). It doesn’t need to have an .mbox extension.
4. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox/.
5. Move the files mbox and Incoming_Mail out of INBOX.mbox, into the Inbox Old folder just created on the Desktop. These files contain all the messages that were in the mailbox before the upgrade to Tiger, and maybe even some messages that had been deleted. mbox is the most important. Incoming_Mail may or may not be present.
6. Move any strangely-named Messages-T0x... folders to the Desktop (not into the Inbox Old folder). These folders are to be deleted after fixing the problem. They are temporary folders created during an import or an indexing process, and Mail should have deleted them when done. Their presence is a clear indication that something didn’t work as expected. If you’ve been using Mail after the conversion and have already tried to fix the problem by rebuilding the mailbox or something like that, they might contain messages that are neither in Messages proper nor in the mbox file, so keep them around until the problem is fixed.
7. Move everything else within INBOX.mbox, except the Messages folder, to the Trash.
The result of the above should be that INBOX.mbox contains the proper Messages folder only, and the Inbox Old folder on the Desktop contains the mbox and Incoming_Mail (if it exists) files only. Now, proceed as follows:
8. Open Mail.
9. The account’s Inbox should properly display in Mail as many messages as *.emlx files are in ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox/Messages/. If that’s not the case, select the mailbox in Mail and do Mailbox > Rebuild.
10. In Mail, do File > Import Mailboxes, choose Other as the data format, and follow the instructions to import the Inbox Old folder that’s on the Desktop.
As a result of doing the above, some messages may be duplicated now. Andreas Amann’s Mail Scripts has a Remove Duplicates script that you may find useful.
Do with the imported mail whatever you wish. You may move the messages anywhere you want and get rid of the imported mailboxes afterwards.
If all is well and you don’t miss anything, the files on the Desktop can be deleted, although you may want to keep them for a while, just in case.
Take a look at the following article (also referenced in the thread I mentioned at the beginning of this post) to learn what you might have done before upgrading to minimize the risk of this happening, and what you may do after fixing the problem to avoid similar issues from happening in the future. DON’T do now what the article suggests, though, as that would make things worse in the current situation:
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
Ask for any clarifications or if you need further assistance.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder. That is, ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder, i.e. /Users/username/Library.

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I recently installed Tiger (and archived my old system) as an upgrade from 10.3.9. Since then, I can't read old messages in Mail. The original messages are deleted from my isp server once the messages are downloaded by Mail. When I open any message in Mail received before I insttalled Tiger I see, where one would normally see the body of the message, the following:
"The message from [email protected] concerning “Your receipt from Apple Store, xxxxx” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."
When I attempt to reply to one of these messages, I can't type anything into the body of the message.
I am online when this happens. I see no "icons" (ie an lightening bolt) next to my inbox; everything appears to be normal. I, also, have approximately 20 gb of free space on my hard drive.
Any suggestions as to how I might retrieve or open old messages? Thanks.

The conversion from Mail 1.x to Mail 2.x is broken. Take a look at the following thread to better understand the problem:
Help! "You need to take this account online in order to download it."
More specifically, if this is a POP account, the following procedure should allow you to fix the Inbox problem. A similar procedure should allow you to fix other mailboxes that might also be affected:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something goes wrong while trying to fix the problem. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is stored.
3. Create a new folder on the Desktop and name it however you wish (e.g. Inbox Old). It doesn’t need to have an .mbox extension.
4. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox/.
5. Move the files mbox and Incoming_Mail out of INBOX.mbox, into the Inbox Old folder just created on the Desktop. These files contain all the messages that were in the mailbox before the upgrade to Tiger, and maybe even some messages that had been deleted. mbox is the most important. Incoming_Mail may or may not be present.
6. Move any strangely-named Messages-T0x... folders to the Desktop (not into the Inbox Old folder). These folders are to be deleted after fixing the problem. They are temporary folders created during an import or an indexing process, and Mail should have deleted them when done. Their presence is a clear indication that something didn’t work as expected. If you’ve been using Mail after the conversion and have already tried to fix the problem by rebuilding the mailbox or something like that, they might contain messages that are neither in Messages proper nor in the mbox file, so keep them around until the problem is fixed.
7. Move everything else within INBOX.mbox, except the Messages folder, to the Trash.
The result of the above should be that INBOX.mbox contains the proper Messages folder only, and the Inbox Old folder on the Desktop contains the mbox and Incoming_Mail (if it exists) files only. Now, proceed as follows:
8. Open Mail.
9. The account’s Inbox should properly display in Mail as many messages as *.emlx files are in ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox/Messages/. If that’s not the case, select the mailbox in Mail and do Mailbox > Rebuild.
10. In Mail, do File > Import Mailboxes, choose Other as the data format, and follow the instructions to import the Inbox Old folder that’s on the Desktop.
As a result of doing the above, some messages may be duplicated now. Andreas Amann’s Mail Scripts has a Remove Duplicates script that you may find useful.
Do with the imported mail whatever you wish. You may move the messages anywhere you want and get rid of the imported mailboxes afterwards.
If all is well and you don’t miss anything, the files on the Desktop can be deleted, although you may want to keep them for a while, just in case.
Take a look at the following article (also referenced in the thread I mentioned at the beginning of this post) to learn what you might have done before upgrading to minimize the risk of this happening, and what you may do after fixing the problem to avoid similar issues from happening in the future. DON’T do now what the article suggests, though, as that would make things worse in the current situation:
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
Ask for any clarifications or if you need further assistance.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user’s home folder, i.e. ~/Library is the Library folder within the user’s home folder.

Can't find sent mail

I accidentally dragged all my "Sent" items (POP and IMAP) into an IMAP "Inbox". Now there is nothing in my "Sent" box and I can't find my old "Sent" items anywhere. Is there any way to recover the missing "Sent" items?

Thanks, Big Joe - For some reason, it took a while for the the IMAP inbox folder to show the sent mail transferred to it, so I couldn't find it. I checked again after receiving your message, and there it was. Mahalo!

I can't find my Mail Library

I have switched from a POP account to an IMAP account and want to import the emails from the old POP account to the new IMAP account.
I am running Yosemite and have spent hours looking for the Library where the old POP emails are stored but can not find it. HELP!
I have read some threads suggesting that this folder is hidden. If so, does anybody know how to find it?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
alexfromseaforth.

If you haven't yet deleted the IMAP account, just drag the messages to the new mailbox within Mail. If you have deleted the account, and you back up with Time Machine, see below.
Bring the Mail browser window forward, then enter Time Machine. You'll see a series of Mail windows cascading back in time, each representing a snapshot of the Mail database.
Scroll back to the most recent snapshot containing the messages you want to restore. Select the messages, then click Restore. The messages will be restored to a new mailbox named "com.apple.Mail.backup" in the On My Mac group. From there you can move them wherever you like.
Depending on how many mailboxes you have, you may have to scroll the mailbox list up or down to see the new entry. According to some reports, you might have to relaunch Mail, or perhaps wait a while for the database to be reindexed, before it shows up. I can't confirm those reports.

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