Re: HELP! URGENT! lost email messages!

Question

had to shut down due to time constrictions, sorry for pushing the need for help, but I was desperate to recover vital lost messages. I tried everything suggested in the Mail help records and past discussion posts. At this point (next morning) my mail is still lost.
any suggestions will be appreciated.
ORIGINAL POST:
HELP! URGENT! lost email messages!
Posted: Jan 21, 2007 6:29 PM
I started, two days ago, receiving four of each message coming to me. I just looked at my accounts and saw two of my primary account (POP.ipa.net is the Incoming mail server), I'd never seen the second one before, so I deleted it.
Went to my (Mac Mail ver. 2.1) mail browser and all my inbox and sent and junk messages now show the same message: "The message from [email protected] concerning “Receipt for Your Payment to (account name)” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."
WHAT!!!!!!??????
I went to Apple discussions and found a problem similar from today and followed the advice there by David Gimeno:
"In the Finder, go to the ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/ account folder, and look at the contents of INBOX.mbox and Sent Messages.mbox."
did this and found nothing under either .mbox folder ...
HELP!!! IMPORTANT MESSAGES ARE IN THE BALANCE!

Answer 1

If you deleted a POP account, then all your mail stored in that account’s mailboxes has been wiped out, not just moved somewhere, and you were warned that this would happen by the following alert:
Remove Account
Are you sure you want to remove the <AccountType> account "<AccountName>"?
This will permanently delete the account setup information, mailboxes, and messages from your computer. Messages stored on the mail server will not be affected.
To prevent that from happening, you should have moved your mail to custom “On My Mac” mailboxes instead of leaving it in the account’s mailboxes.
If the messages are not on the server, and you don’t have a backup, your only option in the case of Mail 2.x is to try to salvage as many deleted *.emlx files as possible with a data recovery tool such as Data Rescue II, TechTool Pro, or FileSalvage (the files to be recovered would be different in the case of Mail 1.x). Of these, the only one I know for sure that can currently recover deleted *.emlx files is FileSalvage. Stop using your computer right now if you want to try that, as anything you do with the computer may cause the deleted files to be overwritten. Actually, your anxiety may very well have already caused some of those messages to be irretrievably lost.
As to why you appear to have lost messages from the account that remains in Mail as well, note that for each account, Mail creates a folder within ~/Library/Mail/ whose name starts with the account type (POP, IMAP, Mac), followed by the account username and the incoming mail server. Deleting a mail account causes the corresponding account folder to be deleted as well.
You should never, ever, set up two accounts in Mail with the same Account Type, User Name, and Incoming Mail Server. Two such accounts would share the same account folder in the filesystem, and deleting one of them would cause the (shared) account folder to be deleted as well...