Mail in "On my Mac" Folders Gone but not Lost

Question

Fourteen messages saved in the "On My Mac" folder disappeared. I viewed just saved files and left the program. Came back 30 minutes later and found the folder empty.
I have located the missing emails in the folder: user/library/mail/mailboxes/deleted messages.mbox.
I can click on them and open them in Mail, but cannot figure out how to recover them.
Ron Maier

Answer 1

You’re welcome.
The folder with the files in question was already on the desktop.
Not sure what you mean. Wasn’t it in ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/?
I attempted to rename it Recoverd.mbox. The Finder wanted to confirm ".mbox".
This shouldn’t have happened if the folder already had an .mbox suffix, which it did if its name really was Deleted Messages.mbox, as you said in your first post...
I didn't because your instructions did not say it was necessary.
It shouldn’t be necessary if the situation was what I thought. Actually, depending on what the situation really was (which at this point I don’t know), it might have been necessary to do something else...
who do I e-mail about the complete lack of detailed information
about this program.
http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/
The "Help" ignores important things like the INBOX is volatile
and mail will be routinely dropped.
What are you talking about? This is wrong.
The little window that pops up says: "Contents stored on server.
Server name INBOX." But what server? And where?
The server associated with the mail account, or course. Who is the provider of this account?
It doesn't say it is stored remotely
What do you mean? You’ve just said that it does say “Contents stored on server”, i.e. remotely. Actually, whether it’s stored locally or on the server depends on the type of the account, i.e. whether it’s POP or IMAP. This is not a Mail issue.
and that your mail will go bye-bye soon.
Again, this is wrong.
Or that the "Smart Folder" does not store the actual message
but more like an "alias" of the file.
This is wrong too. Mail Help’s “Creating a Smart Mailbox” article says this:
A Smart Mailbox displays a set of email messages, stored in other mailboxes, that match specific criteria you have defined. [...]
When you make a change to a message viewed through a Smart Mailbox, such as marking the message as read or unread, or moving or deleting the message, the change is reflected in the mailbox where the message is actually stored.
We have to discover these things through errors and disasters
I agree that Mail’s documentation leaves a lot to be desired. There are even “help” articles that are utterly wrong and suggest things that could lead to irretrievable data loss if the user does what they say (i.e. deleting a POP account), but it seems to me that you’re also making a lot of wrong assumption here...
is there a place where I can properly direct my rant?
There is no right place to post a rant if what you say is wrong...