Unable to find Mail POP directories on Time Machine to retrieve emails.

I have had to do a full retrieve of all my files from Time Machine. For my Mac Mail I can get all of my directories back from my .Mac address but can not find any of my directories for my POP account where most of my emails were stored. I can find the inbox, outbox, drafts and trash for the POP but not the 20 directories that should also be there.

Thank you - I did that but my mail folders that I'd stored on my mac weren't there, and I was only able to access time machine backups starting yesterday (when I upgraded to ML). There's my current inbox with some random stuff from 2003/4 at the end, Trash has a few emails from 4 or 5 days in early October in it, and Sent has a few emails from early June in it. Weird!

Similar Messages

I am unable to restore my backups from my Time Machine

MacBook Pro – My reformatted system that won't restore from my time machine - HELP PLEASE
I loaded Lion when it first came     out and all my troubles started. (It was the same on my 24” iMac).     Mail particularly hardly worked on either machine after loading up     Lion but that's another story and I wish I had never upgraded to      Lion.
I am now in China and took my     MacBook Pro with me
To avoid mail problems I     eventually used web-mail as all I saw was the coloured spinning     wheel all day long otherwise
Gradually the machine got slower     and slower and I saw that coloured wheel more and more
Eventually a message came up to     say my Bootable Drive was almost full.
I checked and it wasn't full of MY     documents. I see on this forum it's an Apple problem - reformatting and restoring user files will not help the problem
On 1st November I did a     Time Machine backup that completed OK
Since then I had removed ALL     documents safely to my Sony Vaio that we bought instead of another     Apple Mac.
Despite removing ALL documents and      emptying the trash for two users the HDD continued to fill up     rapidly
I decided to do one more last     backup on Time Machine so I could reformat the system – This     backup never completed
I had to reformat the system as it     was totally not useable by now
I had expected to put a Snow     Leopard DVD in and restore my system without any problem - I have done this before on my iMac
I was unable to point the restore     to my time machine as it has a WD lock partition and Apple restores     don't recognise the drive may be locked!
No problem I thought, as I will do     it later through the tools utility called Migration Assistant
I have tried several times with     Leopard and Snow Leopard but cannot get the utility to work, as it     is obviously picking up the corrupt “LAST” backup (This is a shortcut to the 6th November uncompleted backup
I tried to move the 1st November one to the last and move the other out as “”Corrupt”,     but we are not allowed to change time machine files. Brilliant idea     but Apple stopped it!
So, I loaded Snow Leopard and got     it to see my Time Machine Files and restored first the Applications     – No problem
Then Library – This failed as     “You haven't permission” - What! Why? This is MY Laptop and MY     files. Apple have to sort out this permission problem. I have had     it three and a half years and it has driven me mad. It's a flawed     way of working in my opinion. It took me three years to empty the     trash because of it.
I then tried to restore the "System" folder which also has a library folder and that failed the same - Why     doesn't Time Machine restore what it's told to? Is it because I     called the MacBook Pro something different? It saw the backup     files OK and gave me the option of the previous MacBook or my iMac     that I also had on the same drive. I chose the MacBook but it would     NOT restore the system.
Conclusion
So, I am stuck in China without my     MacBook Pro and unable to restore my system and unable to retrieve     the 1st November backup which was taken properly.
This means that I cannot run any     programmes and do any work
I have wasted two weeks altogether     on all the combined problems and without a usable system
Any ideas how to restore back to     the 1st November please? Thanks in advance!

UpdateAfter Advice from Apple
RESTOREPROBLEMS
I spoke from China on the1st December to a very helpful Senior Apple Technical person. He gave me my guidelines for a successful restore and we hung up.
Unfortunately, the backup hadn't enough space, so I repartitioned the hard drive and THEN followed his instructions.
At 6 am there was amessage to say it had restored OK (See screen-shot to say it wassuccessful) and so, I pressed OK to restart the MacBook Pro.
All I got was the same as before - a grey spinning wheel.
To cut a very long storyshort, I wasted the whole day trying to make a backup work to no avail. I came to the conclusion that this is yet another example of Lion not working, as I have never had this problem with Leopard and Snow Leopard.
I then got a screen shot of a message never seen before and that may help Apple ….
So, I sent them that screen-shot. Restarting did nothing of course.
Timeto stop the nonsense!
To cut my losses of many days wasted time over the last 5 weeks, I gave up trying to restore and as I have all the data safely tucked away on an external drive, Irebuilt the MacBook Pro with just Leopard.
I then put all theApplications back on one by one and it runs perfectly. Luckily I also had these with me in China!
Ablisteringly quick system on the old Leopard
In fact, Pages and AdobeCS4 are how they were when we purchased the machine 3.5 years ago -Blisteringly quick.
I have a mega large Pages Newsletter about China that I think was over 20 Mb before I shrank it, as it had many photos. This brought the MacBook running Lion to it's knees. On my rebuilt MacBook Pro running Leopard, it ran blisteringly quickly,even before shrinking it.
I managed to finish thenewsletter that I had started on the 21st October and we bulk emailedit out as a PDF 1st December from my MacBook Pro running Leopard.
In fact, the machine isrunning so well, that I think I will stick with Leopard.
LION
I always suspected the problem with Lion was it was constantly doing SAVES all the time that were in the foreground and not the background that I was unable to type in productively. My own opinion is that the developers had been trying to be TOO clever with Lion and for a busy person like me it crippled my productivity that went down by 50% and then eventually to ZERO %.
CONCLUSION
I would like to thank the Apple Technical person for his efforts on my behalf and felt that he should receive this update to close the case.
I stated that hopefully he can pass my observations to the LION TEAM Management or to whoever in Apple needs to see this feedback. The dozen or so problems with Lion have already caused us to go and buy a Sony Vaio instead of another MacBook Pro.
This anti-Apple attitude is by a person that for over 3 years was utterly and completely soldon Apple. No more, as Lion killed all my enthusiasm for Apple. My colleague as well. I asked the Apple Technical person to PLEASE pass this on! Whether he passed the report on I will never know!

Can I use Time Machine to retrieve mail that was in Trash on my MacBook Air, after I emptied Trash?

Can I use Time Machine to retrieve mail that was in Trash on my MacBook Air OS X Yosemite, after I Emptied that Trash?

Interesting question. I don't think you can because Time Machine would have deleted the data in subsequent backups because it was removed from the computer. But you never know about these things until you actually try it, which I've never done. So, why don't you give it a try. Worst that can happen is it's not there and you're no worse off than now.
If you need help with restoring mail from Time Machine: Please visit Pondini's Time Machine FAQ for help with all things Time Machine. Also open Mail and select Mail Help from Mail's help menu. Search for 'restore mail' and see if you don't find some instructions there, too.

Can I find an iphoto events in time machine

Using a macbook pro with Lion 10.7 how can I find an iphoto event in time machine hard drive back up. When I look in picture folder for a back up date I see some individual pictures and an icon for iphoto library. I thought clicking on that would show me iphoto application with the events just as it looks in current time only with the events of the past date. It does not.

Not really - you need to restore the iPhoto library then open it with iPhoto - iPhoto can not access TM backups - they have to be restored first
LN

I can't find Firefox password data in Time Machine?

I upgraded to Firefox 7 today & stupidly deleted the extensions folder of Firefox 6 before doing so. I have attempted to restore bookmarks & password data using Time Machine but I can't find either file. I've done Finder searches and looked manually. There is no Firefox folder in Library, only one named Mozilla, which contains an empty extensions folder. Finder searches find nothing. I know that I am looking for key3.db and signons.sqlite but where have they gone? All help much appreciated.

wardatyork wrote:
Thanks Pondini but that's the point: there is no Firefox folder in Application Support, either in Lion or in Time Machine's backups, no matter how far back I go. There is only a Mozilla folder which is empty. I can locate the Firefox folder in Lion by going through Firefox/troubleshooting/show in finder so it's obviously hidden for some reason.
For some reason, most things in <home folder>/Library are treated as "system files" by a Finder Search, so it won't show them unless you specifically tell the search to include them. Thus it's usually easiest to just navigate to the folder you want.
And in Lion, the <home folder>/Library folder is hidden by default; you can see it via the Finder by pressing the Option key while selecting the Go item in the Finder's menubar. (You can make it permanently visible by copying chflags nohidden ~/Library into a Terminal window.)
I don't know how to do the equivalent in Time Machine. Any ideas?
In Time Machine, the <home folder>/Library folder should appear by default, and you should be able to "drill down" inside it to find the Firefox folder inside the Application Support folder.
If it doesn't, try selecting <home folder>/Library in the Finder as above, then Enter Time Machine. That should show the folder and contents.

Where do I find the Library in a Time Machine backup after Lion installation?

Where do I find the Library in a Time Machine backp after Lion installation?

You can access the backups of another computer by holding down the option key and selecting "Browse other Time Machine disks" from the Time Machine menu in the menu bar. As for getting to the Library folder, you would have to use something like the free application "Tinker Tool" (not "Tinker Tool System") to make hidden files visible in the Finder, then enter Time Machine.

How to re-activate 'Mail' after complete successful Time machine re-installation except 'Mail' backup keeps getting stuck?

How to re-activate 'Mail' after complete successful Time machine re-installation except 'Mail' backup keeps getting stuck?

Trying to re-instal my email history the 'Mail Message Import' dialogue screen says: 'Mail needs to import your messages. This might take a few minutes. You won't be able to use Mail until the import is finished'.
The problem is: after importing 5,000 messages it stops and the 'Time remaining' only keeps adding up to many hours (17 hours). There are almost 80,000 email messages in my Time machine backup.
How to get this working? I am even prepared to give up my email history if i can only get my 'Mail' application working again.

How does one find Mac Mail mailbox in full Time Machine Backup?

I completed full backup of my MacBook on 9/24. I use a directly connected G Drive. I need to restore my mailbox from that backup, but it doesn't show up when I attempt to use Time Machine to do so. How can I find the mail box through Finder on the G Drive?
Thanks,
Chris Reid

Further to this issue: I go into the finder and locate my mailbox in Library. When I go to back up 'Library' it goes back to the date in question - but there is no Library found?! There really must be a problem with the backup process. Any thoughts? I really need to find these emails!
Thanks,
Chris

When I turned on my device the inbox mail was empty, in time machine does not show options to find old back up, only inbox is not listed... how I can get my inbox emails back?

I turned my macbook on and all the emails of inbox were gone. In time machine, only the inbox option does not shows option to get back old back ups... how I can get my inbox emails?

I figured it out. I couldn't see the old backups because the sparsebundle had not been properly unmounted in a previous session, so it kept giving an "already in use" error. The problem was solved by restarting the Time Capsule through the Airport Utility, mounting the sparsebundle by double-clicking it, and then going through the "Browse other backup disks" option in the Time Machine menu bar icon.
The following links were helpful in figuring this out:
http://pondini.org/TM/C12.html
http://pondini.org/TM/17.html

Mail backup possible with Time Machine?

I've done enough reading here to get that Time Machine does not back up the mail portions of the /var directory. As a matter of principle I configured mail services to use an alternate store location located at the root level of my server boot volume. Time Machine is backing that directory up, but just as it would be in the /var directory, some of the sub-directories are not accessible because of permissions being allowed only to _cyrus That makes it pretty difficult to check whether the contents of those folders are being backed up.
I'm just wondering if changing the permissions of those directories for read-only access for a specific user would allow Time Machine to read them and back them up properly, or if that might cause problems in other aspects with mail service in general??
-Doug

Doug
Seriously mate don't entertain it. All the Apple Trainers I've spoken to don't recommend using TimeMachine at all for backing up anything on OSX Server. I happen to think its fine if the Server is simply a File or Web Server or even presenting Shares as TimeMachine points for workstations. If OD and Mail are involved I would not entertain it. Even if you managed a back-up, the real issues will come when and if disaster strikes and you need to restore. There are far too many posts on here detailing the mayhem caused by restoring a mail or ldap database from a TimeMachine backup.
IMO any effective backup strategy should not involve fire-fighting a restore. However it's your server and only you will really know what's best for it.
My 2p.
Tony

How do I retrieve my Mail files from a Time Machine backup?

I reformatted my iMac hard rive because I was having all kinds of problems with speed and crashing. I did a Time Machine backup and then reformatted the hard drive and reinstalled Yosemite. I then reinstalled fresh apps and all my files. I just don't know where to find my email files on the backup. I don't even know where to find them on my current system. In older OS X systems, they were easily located under your user name. Where'd they go? Please help.

Open Finder then your user Library. You can get to your user Library from Finder/Go/Go To Folder and type ~/Library
Next, open the Mail folder; then click on the Time Machine icon in the Menu Bar and Enter Time Machine. This should open Time Machine to your ~/Library/Mail folder that you just opened. Now, you should be able to copy your V2 folder for what ever date that should have all your mailboxes.

Mail not found in Spotlight / Mail not backuped in Time Machine

On my OS X Lion Server 10.7.2 (on Mac OS X Server Mini), I am unable to search for any mail of the logged-on local user. Furthermore, no data from the Mail.app is saved in the Time Machine.
All other data can be found in Spotlight and all other data is backuped normally with Time Machine. The Mail.app works fine and is configured normally.

I think you have not placed mail.jar and activation.jar files in the /jre/lib/ext directory. Just place the mail.jar and activation.jar files in the jdk's /jre/lib/ext directory and check out. This will work for you.
Rkanthj

Finder crashes when backing up time machine or carbon copy cloner

I'm trying to create backups of my system, i did have time machine running to a secondary drive internally, but that stopped working at some point and i assumed it was a bad partition.
Everytime i try to create a backup through timemachine it would crash the finder (though it would never create a crash report, just hang) i'd have to hard crash my machine to get it running again.
I verified and repaired any permissions, dumped pref files but still no joy.
I've now bought 2 new drives for clone / backups, thinking the drive is perhaps corrupt.
My plan was to use carbon copy cloner and clone the main hdd as a safety,( incase it was a time machine issue) but its doing the same with CCC-
when i hit clone the finder window pops up asking for my admin password, but beachballs and wont let me type anything. i can select anything with the keyboard (i.e. Jump between programs, or force shutdown running apps) i can shutdown using the file menu but i can close any open windows.
I can copy files manually, but i want a bootable backup of the main hdd (i'm a video editor and reinstalling an entire suite is not good when on a job)
Can anyone suggest a workaround to cloning the main hdd (even if it does have a bug in it, i'd rather have something safe before i do a fresh install)
Cheers

That should read 'CAN'T select anything with the keyboard or finder'

Importing Mail folders from a Time Machine Backup

Hi,
i just finished setting up my brand new MacBook Air, what i wan't able to do was to import my Mail folders from the last backup of my previous MacBookPro and merge them into Mail on this computer.
To be more detailed, on my last computer i had some folders i created to store some important emails from work, from a specific person or for a specific porpouse.
I would definitly need those folders with the emails they contains on this computer too.
What i have is a backup made from time machine on an external device. I cannot restore Mail from it because it says it's a basic application of osx and cannot be deleted. Is there a path or a specific way i can find those folders with and bring them on my new computer?
Thanks a lot to all who will help me.
To be more clear, here is a screen of the type of folders i mean:

This item in Pondinis Time Machine stuff may help:
You can restore entire mailboxes or individual messages
http://web.me.com/pondini/Time_Machine/15.html
Regards,
Colin R.

HT201250 How to recover mails of outlook from time machine

How to recover mails of outlook from time machine

This worked for me:
From Time Machine, restore a good backup of the entire "/Users/james/Library/Application Support/Address Book" folder to a different location, like to a folder on your desktop.
(note: the Library folder typically won't show up in Finder. To make it visible, in Terminal, issue this command:
        defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles YES
        then restart Finder: killall Finder )
Go offline. Do whatever you need to do to get completely disconnected from the internet (turn off Wireless, unplug the ethernet cable, etc.). Otherwise, iCloud will immediately overwrite your restore.
Delete the real folder: /Users/james/Library/Application Support/Address Book
Copy your restore (at the different location), to the real location ( /Users/james/Library/Application Support/Address Book )
Restart Contacts. Your restored data you want should be there. Before going online again, Export all these contacts (File - Export - etc...)
Go online again. iCloud will wipe out your Address Book with what's on iCloud. Re-import contacts as needed from your Export.

Unable to find Mail POP directories on Time Machine to retrieve emails.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for