Sent messages gone from Time Machine

I posted this on the Time Machine forum and they sent me here. I have several issues, one of which is Mail going offline frequently throughout the day when I have not instructed it to do so, and refusing to go on-line when I request it. I have to close the program, reopen it, and it's back on-line. A few minutes later, it's offline again. I read in the Discussions to trash the prefs and re-enter all my account info. I didn't get that far because as soon as I trashed the prefs all my Sent mails were gone. I went into Time Machine to retrieve them and they aren't there. I've tried rebuilding the Mailboxes, no go. I also dragged the prefs out of the Trash and put them back. Still nothing. Does anyone know what I am doing wrong and where my e-mails went? Thanks.

This issue sounds suspiciously similar to my recent post ... Mail 4.2 is "deleting" all of my downloaded POP Inbox and Sent messages older than 30 days and these are not available in my Time Machine either.
I was always able to access old messages well beyond 30 days (even 2 years old) but now it appears that the only things left are the headers in those mail boxes. I just noticed this this week.
Check out my post and share any thoughts ... thanks so much, Greg

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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.

HT1277 Mail has gone crazy. Header's and messages are mixed up. New Mac Book Pro. Migrated files from Time machine running snow leopard. Reinstall or new computer needed?

Mail has gone crazy. Header's and messages are mixed up. New Mac Book Pro. Migrated files from Time machine running snow leopard. Reinstall or new computer needed?

Ok; I'm not sure what you're doing. 36 hours is rather long. Seems like a new migration. Not what I intended.
Here's what I intended: from the newly-migrated and apparently-corrupt environment, create a new user, not related to any existing user, nor any migration-created user, or any other user for that matter. That is, use  > System Preferences > Users and Groups, authenticate yourself by clicking on the padlock, and then click the + and create a wholly new user. Then log in under that user and establish the mail access.
36 hours? I'm wondering if there's an error or an exceedingly slow network here? Or a really, really slow disk? Or a sick backup? (WiFi isn't the path I'd usually choose, either.)
Failing the attempted second migration, I'd try a different tactic. Does your existing (old) system work? If so, I'd bypass the backup and connect an external (scratch) USB disk drive to the (old) sstem and then boot and use Disk Utility booted from the installer DVD disk or boot and use Disk Utility from the recovery partition or booted from a recovery partition created on some other external storage (details here vary by the OS X version and what hardware you have), and perform a full-disk backup of your original internal disk to (scratch) external storage. (Make sure you get the source and target disks chosen correctly here; copying the wrong way — from the scratch disk to your existing disk — will clobber your data!) In esssence, this will clone your existing boot disk. Then dismount the (formerly-scratch) external disk, transfer it over to the new system, and use it as the source of the migration, by performing a fresh OS X installation on the new system.
Target Disk Mode is also sometimes an option for accessing the disk for a migration, but that requires the right cable, and requires systems that have the same external connection; newer MacBook Pro systems use Thunderbolt for this, and older systems tend to use FireWire. And I'm guessing you don't have compatible hardware.
The details here can and do vary by your OS X versions and your particular Mac systems — if you'll identify the specific models and hardware, somebody might be able to better tailor the above (fairly generic) sequence to your particular configuration.

Can't restore from Time Machine backup error message

My hard drive on my Macbook failed a few days ago. Just makes a clanking noise and won't boot up etc... I installed a new drive, formatted it, and selected restore from Time Machine backup from the installer screen. It started restoring from my backup I had on an external drive and everything was fine untill it got about 6% done then get a message that says "An error occured when restoring from the backup" It is pretty non descriptive. It also says please restart your system and try again or something to that effect. I tried again, same problem. When I try to copy files over manually I eventually gets some error that says there is a problem with a file and it will quit. Any ideas on how to get my data? I can see all my files on there, but can't get them. My backup disc is just used for backup on this one machine nothing else, so it shouldn't have a problem. Help!

Good to hear MA is doing something!
>I have never had much luck with Time Machine...
Same here, not one good backup or restore, can't tell which.
You can set any of these to Clone/Update as often as you wish...
Carbon copy cloner...
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
Or SuperDuper...
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
Or the most expensive one & my favorite, Tri-Backup...
http://www.tri-edre.com/english/products/tribackup.html

After reformatting my 1 Tb WD ext drive and tinkering with the "exclude these items" list, I now get the following error message from Time Machine:Are you sure you want to back up to the same device your original data is on? the WD disk has mounted??

After reformatting my 1 Tb WD ext drive and tinkering with the "exclude these items" list, I now get the following error message from Time Machine: "Are you sure you want to back up to the same device your original data is on?" I've reformatted in Disk Utilities...not sure what I did wrong. Any help would be appreciated.

Not sure what you mean by "booted" from it.
If the Mac OS is installed on the external drive, then it's possible to start up from it, just as you do from your internal drive. Please open the Startup Disk preference pane in System Preferences, and verify that your internal drive is selected as the startup disk.
Assuming that's the case, then it may be that your TM settings have been corrupted. Turn off TM, then move or delete the file /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine.plist. Turn TM back on, recreate your settings, and try again.

Had to restore my iMac from Time Machine. After the restoration all programs are functioning except my Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium. When I start any program in the suite the error message, "Licensing for this product has stopped working." I rest

I had to restore my iMac from Time Machine. After the restoration all programs are functioning except my Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design Premium. When I start any program in the suite the error message, "Licensing for this product has stopped working." I restarted the computer and tried again to run Photoshop and the same error message appeared. The message was followed by a message that stated that I needed to contact Adobe technical support and mention Error: 150.30. I need Adobe technical support to provide me a solution for my problem so I can continue using my Adobe products installed on my computer.

Unfortunately when Adobe products are restored from backup, especial CS4 and especially Mac, it breaks licensing.
There is a python script included in the license recovery kit that should work if you are familiar with Terminal.
If not, you must reinstall your CS4 suite. You don't need to delete your preferences, so it should be the same as before.
Error "Licensing has stopped working" | Mac OS
Gene

I've recently received an error message from Time Machine that my Macbook Pro's sparsebundle is in use. What is this and what can I do about it?

I've recently received an error message from Time Machine that my Macbook Pro's sparsebundle is in use. What is this and what can I do about it?

This is asked at least 5-6 times a day here.
Look at the right hand column.. more like this.
It is a bug in Mountain Lion.
Read C12 http://pondini.org/TM/Troubleshooting.html
But the fast solution.. unplug the TC.. count to 10.. plug it back in.

I have a late 2006 iMac that has just started giving me a message to reboot after a black screen comes down slowly from the top top of the screen to the bottom. I reloaded software and restored from Time Machine, it now happens frequently. Any insight?

I have a late 2006 iMac that has just started giving me a message to reboot after a black screen comes down slowly from the top top of the screen to the bottom. I reloaded software and restored from Time Machine, but it keeps happening, now several tomes a day. Any insight as to the issue or a proposed solution?

Unplug any peripherals you have except your keyboard, reboot, and check activity monitor for apps. Keep running apps to a minimum to find the App causing the issue.

I just replaced my hard drive and restored everything from Time machine. However, I am unable to open iphoto and the following message appears Your photo library was not found. Do you want to find your iPhoto Library?

I just replaced my hard drive and restored everything from Time machine. However, I am unable to open iphoto and the following message appears Your photo library was not found. Do you want to find your iPhoto Library?
Where do I find this library?
thanks
Shak

Twas quite a hassle if I am honest which was eventually resolved but I don't feel qualified to help anyone through the process as it required a trip to my local apple store and a genius bar appointment.
Personally, I would do anything like moving pictures out of folders etc. Certainly not creating a new users. i don't think that is an elegant solution
Try the following which MAY just about rescue the situation for you but if they don't work you may have to do something more drastic.
(1) Holding down Cmd & Alt at the same time, start iPhoto by clicking on the iPhoto icon. From the resulting menu choose Rebuild photo library by selecting all available options given to you and then pressing REBUILD!
If that doesn't work
(2) Fire up Utilities. Go to migration assistant. Chose 'From another Time machine back-up'. Open the 'Users' option that comes up next and from there select Pictures, then uncheck everything else like Applications etc (you don't want to do a full migration of everything) and click go.
If that doesn't work, take a deep breath and this step is rather complicated but it worked for me. First of all close iPhoto! Then go to new Finder window.
From the Finder window choose Pictures, then iPhoto library, press CMD and the letter i. It brings up a new window. Go to Sharing & permissions. From there select the padlock to unlock settings. and then select User account, then press the 'cog' icon next to +/- abd choose Apply to enclosed items.
This may take a while. Once completed, re-open iPhoto.
And that should (I stress should) cure it.
Good luck.

Recovering Mail messages from Time Machine drive

I recently deleted some important Mail messages do to my iPhone and iMac Mail sync via the Cloud. The messages are likely (for sure) on my Time Machine drive, but I don't know a simple way to find them. Right now enter Time Machine and can go User> Me> Library> Mail and the into the inbox of the related Mail account and then I am arbitrarily looking in subfolders with # labels, and seeing lists of xml (or whatever they are) files. The are in no order, and when I open them I find messages willy nilly from past dates.
Is there an easy way to actually find these messages, to search or read the messages in the Time Machine drive to recover specific ones. The method I describe above is simply not workable.
Thanks.

Note that you have to open the Time Machine app while you are using the Mail window. If not, a Finder window will pop up and it will not work. After opening the Time Machine app, you should see a screen like this one:
Then, use the arrows to navigate through your backups, and when you have found the mails you want to restore, select them with the Command key and press "Restore". Note that OS X is in Spanish in my computer, but you should see the text in English.

I tried to instal 10.8.3 to my MBP and it crashed. I then tried to restore from Time machine but when it is about 50% through a message comes up "the files cannot be restored"

I tried to instal 10.8.3 to my MBP and it crashed. I then tried to restore from Time machine but when it is about 50% through a message comes up "the files cannot be restored" Can anyone help me to get out of this mess?

Back up all data.
Boot into Recovery by holding down the key combination command-R at the startup chime. Release the keys when you see a gray screen with a spinning dial.
Note: You need an always-on Ethernet or Wi-Fi connection to the Internet to use Recovery. It won’t work with USB or PPPoE modems, or with proxy servers, or with networks that require a certificate for authentication.
When the OS X Utilities screen appears, follow the prompts to reinstall the OS. You don't need to erase the boot volume, and you won't need your backup unless something goes wrong. If your Mac was upgraded from an older version of OS X, you’ll need the Apple ID and password you used to upgrade, so make a note of those before you begin.

Message from Time Machine

I got a message from Time Machine that it did a verification and it had to do a new backup and now it erased ALL of my original backups!!! Why????!!!!!!! How can I get it back or reverse this?

There was a problem with the disk. It's too late now to get back the backups.

My work calendar is gone off of ical and icloud. how do i restore this from time machine

last night i opened reminders and there was new list with the same name as my work calendar. i immediately deleted it as i don't want my reminders to show up on a shared work calendar. now this morning i find out by deleting this NEVER CREATED REMINDER LIST, my work calendar has been deleted as well. is there a way to restore this calendar from time machine?

Hey there,
It sounds like you're still having trouble exposing the proper library folder. You can use the following terminal command to do it globally (this will show all hidden files)
Open Terminal from your appliications folder and copy/paste this into it:
defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles TRUE (press return)
**After that last line you'll need to restart the finder so use:
killall Finder (press return)
Now if you enter Time Machine the correct Library should be visible. To re-hide your hidden files repeat the process above but replace TRUE with FALSE, then use the "killall Finder" again.
I agree with the commenters above, you should restore the Mail library to the desktop and then re-import it to Mail. This is how I was instructed to solve this problem by Mac help, who I chatted with online for quite a while before they figured it out.
Hope this helps

All itunes data gone...can I reload from Time Machine and external HD

Okay, so maybe I was the stupid one and deleted all of my ITunes library....don't yell, I just wanted to free up some HD space...
Fortunately I use Time Machine and an external HD to back everything up..can I reload my Itunes library from Time Machine and the external HD..can anyone walk me through the process?

docutale1 wrote:
Hi there,
I've done some searching and i haven't been able to find the answer to this problem. I am wondering if someone can help me with this.
My HD was faulty so i had it replaced. my complete 300gb music library was backed up on an external HD. The iTunes program was running on my local HD. So i ran the local iTunes off of my ext. HD.
Now that i have a new HD and i restored everything from Time Machine,
Did you restore the entire disk from Time Machine?
Boot from your System install DVD then Restore from backup and select the Time Machine drive?
See this -> http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/14.html

I just replaced the hard drive on my macbook pro, reformatted new hard drive and copied over a backup from time machine now I have a kernel panic message (you must restart) - what do I do now?

i just replaced the hard drive on my macbook pro, reformatted new hard drive, installed a back up from time machine and now have kernel panic ( you must restart your computer) what do I need to do?

If you're able to boot, 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, press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
Select the most recent panic log under System Diagnostic Reports. Post the contents – the text, please, not a screenshot. For privacy’s sake, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header and body of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.) Please don't post "shutdownStall" or "hang" reports.
If you can't boot in the usual way, try a safe boot. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
During startup, you’ll see a progress bar, and then the login screen, which appears even if you normally log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Safe mode is slower than normal, and some things won’t work at all.

Sent messages gone from Time Machine

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