Deleting Mail Folders in Time Machine

I want to delete all time machine back up files certain selected mail folders and emails. How do I do that?
If I open mail in the finder, then enter time machine, the mail folders in a mail window appears in time machine but the action menu in the bottom left hand corner of the mail window is greyed out and unusable.
If I simple enter time machine without previously opening mail in my finder I get a finder in time machine. Then if I select applications/mail I do get an working action menu with the choice 'delete all backups of mail'. But I only want to delete all backups of certain mail folders and messages leaving others untouched, is this possible?

It is possible but it's very tricky, since you have to navigate your way round the library folders and it's easy to delete the wrong file. In general, you have to navigate to Library/Mail, then into the folder for your mail account, then the folder for the INBOX, then Messages, then find the message you want to delete.
Bob

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Why I cannot assess deleted Apple mail messages in time machine after installing mountain lion from snow leopard.

Ever since I installed Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard, I cannot retrieve my deleted Apple mail messages from Time Machine. I could do it in the past using Snow Leopard. The effective date for the the non-retrival of deleted messages is the date I installed Mountain Lion from Snow Leopard. Any thoughts?

Keith Montreal wrote:
It was origionally a local folder for things like receipts from the Apple Store, etc
I'm still not sure what you mean . . . is it listed in the "On My Mac" section in Mail's sidebar, like these?
Mountain Lion appears to have given it an icon very much like an Archive box and put the "on My Mac" folder within that "Box" on both the back ups and the new Mail program - in fact it did it 6 times, which was the origional problem.
Can you post a screenshot?
I could restore inbox messages although they came in as a new mail box called Time Machine rather than into their origional mailboxes (there are 7 different addresses)
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Can't restore folders from Time Machine after Lion

Hello guys,
after upgrading to Lion 10.7.1 I can't seem able to restore some old folders from Time Machine
Here's what happens: I log in TM, I can scroll through my old backups, I can choose the folders I want to restore, I can click on the folder, but when the systems tries to restore it, it stops saying that I don't have the privileges to access file A in the folder (and then all the procedure is stopped).
Oddly (at least for me) if I try to restore just that same file A (and not the whole folder) that I should have no privileges for, from the same old backup, I can do it, but I have to give the system my password: It pops up a window saying something "Finder is willing to make some modification, can you authorize?" (forgive i'm translating the alert from another language) and then I can restore it.
Has anybody else this problem and how can be solved?
Many thanks
Ps: I did a simple upgrade on Lion, no partition, no blank disk, and never changed anything in my user preferences, it's always the same, administrator
Pps: Before Lion I could restore easily exactly the same folders and files I tried to restore with Lion

wrongusername wrote:
But if I transfer everything with the Setup Assistant, won't I once again be experiencing the problems I had?
If the problems were caused by your data. But that's extremely unlikely. It may have been an app, or, much more likely from your description, something corrupted in the Leopard OS. That's one of the problems with upgrading a sick system without knowing what or where the causes are. It's a bit like a brain surgeon operating on himself: if he isn't in tip-top shape to start with, his condition is likely to change, and not for the better.
Most of us would have recommended first simply doing a +*Repair Disk+* on your internal HD; if that didn't help, installing the "combo" Leopard update; if that didn't work, doing an +Archive and Install+ and re-installing the "combo."
After a clean re-install of Snow Leopard, my Mac worked fine again (except for the TM trouble). So it probably had something to do with my old files.
Probably not. Much more likely OSX was somehow damaged. And you got a whole new one.
How come I could read the files on my external HD and yet not be able to copy the files?
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Can't exclude folders from Time Machine backups

I am trying to exclude Folders from backups to preserve space.
Go into Time Machine preferences and Options - I can select + to Exclude Folders, and select a Folder, but on then selecting to Exclude nothing gets returned to the "Exclude these items from backups" form.
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Welcome to the Apple Support Communities
Mails are stored on ~/Library/Mail, being ~ your user folder. As you are running Snow Leopard, it's easy to exclude your mails from your Time Machine backup.
Open System Preferences > Time Machine > Options, and add ~/Library/Mail to excluded items, so the next backup won't include mails. Note that you have to go to your user folder, in order to access to this directory

How do I find an e-mail in my Time Machine back-up?

i'm looking for a draft e-mail in mac mail from a time machine back-up....where can i find that?
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omg so simple....perfect....thank you sooooo much....you saved me

How can i delete a 'backups' from time machine for a computer i no longer have

i have been using my time capsule for a few years now, everything was great until my imac died and i had to replace it
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how can i remove this old back up from the time capsule
click here for instructions.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? Only one Sparse Bundle, same name.

Due to NAS issues, when I started a new time machine backup it did not have the old backups available. My question is do I need to delete them or will time machine automatically reclaim the space? There is only one sparse bundle but when I enter time machine I don't see my historic backups. I use a synology DS212 for my time machine. Started a new backup which is 218gb but it says 618 gb is occupied therefore it looks like 2 or 3 backups are still on the disk. Before my NAS issues the last backup was in 2014. As you can see there is a second sparse bundle from 2012. Not sure what that is.

This is an old message now, but what happened to me similarly was:
I had a major computer crash and through complicated pathways ended up reinstalling (Mavericks) as a new user (long story).
At least I had good Time Machine backups on an NAS drive (Synology DS212j), or so I thought - when I started Time Machine up again, the old backup file was gone, replaced by a new one using my "new computer" name. The old file was gone both by directly mounting the NAS drive and by clicking "Enter Time Machine".
It's like I had {OldShareName}.sparsebundle and then it was replaced by {NewShareName}.sparsebundle, all of the old info vanished.
(I have spent a week finding old files elsewhere and have completed a satisfactory self-restore. It pays to "archive" [my own variation of] as well as "back-up".)
My belief is that if this were a wired-netword-drive, e.g. plugged right into my iMac with a USB cable, then the old file would have remained.
But this is an NAS drive, connected directly to my Airport wireless router, and I don't know the significance of the fact that it stores its Time Machine backups as "sparsebundle" files rather than simply as plain(er) files.
As usual when things get complicated with computers (not just Apple computers) there was never a warning message. Something like "YOU'RE ABOUT TO DELETE A TIME MACHINE BACK-UP FILE!!!" would have made my life a lot simpler.
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I'm not sure that I have a question about this other than "why do these things happen to me?", but it's a warning. Apart from that I've been very happy with the stability and reliability (but not the cost or set-up complexity) of NAS vs. directly-cabled external drives.
Charles

I updated my iMac to Mountain Lion. All the files were deleted. I have Time Machine backups. When I restart the mac pressing Command R to restore from backup it shows the previous OS X (Leopard) beside the date of the backup. Will it go back if I restore?

I updated my iMac to Mountain Lion. All the files were deleted. I have Time Machine backups. When I restart the mac pressing Command R to restore it from the backup it shows the previous OS X (Leopard) beside the date of the backup that I want to select. Will it go back to Leopard if I restore it from the backup?

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App Compatibility Table - RoaringApps - App compatibility and feature support for OS X & iOS
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James Mamakos wrote:
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Message Edited by Ben on 04-28-2009 08:58 AM
Ben Rayner
I am currently active on.. MainStream Preppers
Rayner's Ridge is under construction

Where do i find mail on a time machine copy

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https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4182934

Delete multiple backups in time machine?

Is there a way to delete multiple backups in TIme Machine and not have to delete old files one by one by slow one by one?

pcp0827 wrote:
Is there a way to delete multiple backups in TIme Machine and not have to delete old files one by one by slow one by one?
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How to delete old backups in time machine.
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See Here > Should I delete old backups? If so, How?
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Deleting Mail Folders in Time Machine

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