Cannot restore a mailbox from Time Machine

Question

On the recent Yosemithe I cannot restore a mailbox from my Time Machine backup. I proceed exactly as described in the Mail (Yosemite): Restore mailboxes and their content article. However, nothing happens after the process window completes. The restored content does not appear anywhere.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

Although you can restore messages from a Time Machine snapshot within the Mail application, it generally won't work with messages that were saved by an obsolete version of Mail. In that case, you have to use an alternative method.
Triple-click anywhere in the line below on this page to select it:
~/Library/Mail/V2
Right-click or control-click the highlighted line and select
          Services ▹ Open
from the contextual menu.* A folder should open. Inside it are subfolders representing your Mail accounts. The names refer to the email addresses you use.
Enter Time Machine and scroll back to the snapshot you want. Select the account folders you want and then select  Restore ... to... from the action menu (gear icon) in the toolbar of the snapshot window. Restore the folders to the Desktop, not to their original location.
From the Mail menu bar, select
          File ▹ Import Mailboxes...
Choose Apple Mail as the format and import from the mailboxes in the folders you restored to the Desktop. The imported messages will appear in a new mailbox. Move the ones you want to keep wherever you like and delete the rest. Then delete the folders on the Desktop.
*If you don't see the contextual menu item, copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C. In the Finder, select
          Go ▹ Go to Folder...
from the menu bar and paste into the box that opens by pressing command-V. You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.