How restore aol sent mac mail from time machine?

Question

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.
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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

Answer 1

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.