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!!!

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How to recover mail from time machine

I need to recover all my emails - thousands of messages in numerous mailboxes - from Time Machine. What is the best way to do this?

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...
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, paste into the box that opens (command-V). You won't see what you pasted because a line break is included. Press return.

How to restore mail with Time Machine?

Hi,
I recently (accidentally) deleted an old mail account, which also seems to delete all of the messages on that account from your mail client.
Using time machine I selected the application (from a backup about a week ago), and clicked 'Restore'.
I selected 'Keep Both' so as to maintain my newer mail (just seeing what would happen).
Now I have two mail applications, one called 'Mail' and one called 'Mail (original)'
However, neither of them have my 2nd account with my associated emails. Can anyone advise?
Just to be clear, both mail apps seem to be exactly the same.
Many Thanks,
Drew
Message was edited by: xroox

Of course they are both the same. The application is not what you want to restore; it's the mailboxes that you want. Throw one of the redundant applications away. Now open Mail, then enter Time Machine while Mail is the current application. Step back in time until you find the mailboxes you need.

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.

HT201250 I selected old mail in time machine and it will not open. How can I open it?

I selected old mail in time machine and it will not open. How can I open it?

Have a read here https://discussions.apple.com/message/15701309#15701309
Seems that you have to update Logic to the latest version (9.0.15) to get it to work in Lion.
Stefan

HT201250 How can I exclude mail from Time Machine backups?

How can I exclude mail from Time Machine backups?

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

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

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.

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.

How can I get my time machine to allow me to recover files again? After upgrading to OS X, the time machine still backs up the files; but, I'm not able to navigate within the time machine or select any folders or files for restore.

How can I get my time machine to allow me to recover files again?
After upgrading MBA to OS X, the time machine still backs up the files; but, I'm not able to navigate within the time machine or select any folders or files for restore.
I've searched and can not find a solution to the problem that's being encountered.

Yeap that all makes sense now.
Do you only have the current backup showing in the TM display?? Won't it fill in the rest?
Over wireless are you waiting for the indexing to finish.. ??
Previous backup may not show for a couple of hours.
Long short of it.. Mavericks version of TM is a pain.
Sometimes it is easier to completely ignore the TM backup and do the restore manually.
I have posted the details here. See if this helps.
Can't access old files on time capsule

I cannot access old e-mails via Time machine since installing Mountain Lion at the beginning of August.

I cannot access old e-mails via Time machine since installing Mountain Lion at the beginning of August. I can access those received and sent since the benning of August. I can access other documents prior to August.

Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left.
Click the Clear Display icon in the toolbar. Try the action that you're having trouble with again. Post any messages that appear in the Console window – the text, please, not a screenshot.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Edit it out by search-and-replace in a text editor before posting.

I'm running Pages version 5.2 on a Desktop Mac version 10.9.2. with the Pages app open how do I use the Time Machine to go back five hours to see the work?

I'm running Pages version 5.2 on a Desktop Mac version 10.9.2. With the Pages app open how do I use the Time Machine to go back five hours to see my page? Can I access Time Machine within an app like Pages? How do I enter Time Machine within the application? It always takes me to the Finder. I apolgise for the mumbo jumbo. I simply do not know how to use Time Machine. It makes sense when I follow the Tutorial but then I lose it.

OK. You've kind of skipped over the reason why you want to go back five hours, but my assumption would be that you've made changes to a Pages file that you want to revert.
There are two ways to tackle this. From Pages itself, open the current version of your document, and from the File menu, click Revert To, and Browse All Versions. You'll then be in the Time Machine interface for that file, and can browse back to the version you want.
Or, outside of Pages, you can select the file (or the folder it was originally in, if you've since deleted it) and enter Time Machine from the TM menu (it sounds like you've already tried this?)
best
Matt

I have a power pc (g5) computer that I will soon be replacing with a current i5 or i7 mini. How do I transfer the Time Machine files from the internal hard drive on the G5 to an external drive that I will later use with the Mini?

I have a Power PC G5 computer that I will soon be replacing with a current i5 or i7 Mini. How do I transfer the Time Machine files from the internal hard drive on the G5 to an external drive that I will later use with the Mini?

Hi, likely the easiest is to just poll the drive & get something like this...
Get MacScan...
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/networking_security/macscan.html
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/NewerTech/U3NVSPATA/
But if you have a good external drive already, just clone it.
Get carbon copy cloner to make an exact copy of your old HD to the New one...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/

How can I copy a time machine backup from one Time Capsule to another ?

How can I copy a time machine backup from one Time Capsule to another ? I bought a 1 Tb Time Capsule to replace my 512Mb Time Capsule. Now, I like to copy my time machine backup from the old Time Capsule to the new one so I can keep using my backup.

from this support article:
(click on image to enlarge)

After a clean install, how can I continue using Time Machine?

After a clean install, how can I continue using Time Machine?
I booted from my recovery partition, erased my HD, installed the same OS, (Lion, 10.7.5) then restored from my TM.
If it asks if i want to use TM, I say yes. When I chose the drive, it seems to want to start all over, instead of just picking up where I left off.
Is there any way of picking up where I left off?

Hi Frank,
You are sure you looking in your Library in /Users/YOUR_USERNAME/Library and not /Library at the top level of your harddrive?
When you open iCal what do you see? Are the calendars the two default Home and Work ones?
I really appreciate the responses -- especially if you are in the UK as opposed to Ontario.
Why, do you have something against London Ontario?
John M

How to Search Mail in Time Machine

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