My Mail is gone - Please help

Question

I upgraded to tiger last night. And then Updated to 10.4.8 as well. Now when I launch my mail program I am missing a huge chunk of emails. i did a basic install. Also in the folders that I created there are also no emails.
what went wrong? I made the mistake to not backup my user folder before I installed tiger. But why would it remember some data, like folder names, and account names but not retreive ALL my emails.
Any insights would be greatly appreciated...there are SOO many business contacts on here that I can not lose.
please help
jack
ps I went into user>library>mail>mailboxes. to find the emails within the folders. Some luck but again, some are there some are not. Why would it keep some but delete others. Does it have to do with the fact that they were read or not. Because I put emails in folders to be read later.

Answer 1

The conversion from Mail 1.x to Mail 2.x is broken. Take a look at the following thread to better understand the problem:
Help! "You need to take this account online in order to download it."
In particular, you may want to take a look at the following article (also referenced in that thread) to learn what you might have done before upgrading to minimize the risk of this happening, and what you may do after fixing the problem to avoid similar issues from happening in the future. DON'T do now what the article suggests, though, as that would make things worse in the current situation:
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
More specifically, if this is a POP account, the following procedure should allow you to fix the Inbox problems. A similar procedure can be applied to other mailboxes, either within the account folder or within ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/:
1. Quit Mail.
2. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something goes wrong while trying to fix the problem. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is stored.
3. Create a new folder on the Desktop and name it however you wish (e.g. Inbox Old). It doesn't need to have an .mbox extension.
4. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox/.
5. Move the files mbox and Incoming_Mail out of INBOX.mbox, into the Inbox Old folder just created on the Desktop. These files contain all the messages that were in the mailbox before the upgrade to Tiger, and maybe even some messages that had been deleted. mbox is the most important. Incoming_Mail may or may not be present.
6. Move any strangely-named Messages-XXXXXX folder to the Desktop (not into the Inbox Old folder). These folders are to be deleted after fixing the problem. They are temporary folders created during an import or an indexing process, and Mail should have deleted them when done. Their presence is a clear indication that something didn't work as expected. If you've been using Mail after the conversion and have already tried to fix the problem by rebuilding the mailbox or something like that, they might contain messages that are neither in Messages proper nor in the mbox file, so keep them around until the problem is fixed.
7. Move everything else within INBOX.mbox, except the Messages folder, to the Trash.
The result of the above should be that INBOX.mbox contains the proper Messages folder only, and the Inbox Old folder on the Desktop contains the mbox and Incoming_Mail (if it exists) files only. Now, proceed as follows:
8. Open Mail.
9. The account's Inbox should properly display in Mail as many messages as *.emlx files are in ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/INBOX.mbox/Messages/. If that's not the case, select the mailbox in Mail and do Mailbox > Rebuild.
10. In Mail, do File > Import Mailboxes, choose Other as the data format, and follow the instructions to import the Inbox Old folder that's on the Desktop. Do with the imported mail whatever you wish. You may move to the account's Inbox the messages that Mail failed to convert properly, and delete those that did get through and, hence, are duplicates now.
The following collection of AppleScripts has a Remove Duplicates script that can be useful for removing duplicate messages:
http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/Mail_Scripts.html
If all is well and you're not missing anything, the files on the Desktop can be deleted, although you may want to keep them for a while, just in case.
Ask for any clarifications or if you need further assistance.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder, i.e. ~/Library is the Library folder within the user's home folder.