Retrieve e-mails
I have a contract with Namesco. They recently asked me to change my e-mail address. I agreed.
I had already announced the change to a number of my e-mail addresses, but hadn't done all.
On the night of the disconnection of the old e-mail address all e-mails in my inbox, which I had received since 01/01/20 (about 18000), became empty. The announcement of the incoming addresses remains, but when I open them there is no content. I still have content for previous years (e.g. 2019). No problem there.
My question is: I have back ups (time machine as well as others); how do I retrieve the original e-mails from my back ups - if at all possible?
I haven't contacted Namesco yet. I would like to know first whether my backups help.
Réiteach roghnaithe
You said you had backups, so if they included the TB profile folder, you can recover mbox files (mail folders) and copy them into the current profile. Help/Troubleshooting, click Show in Finder to open the current profile, where you can see the profile's location and folder structure with Mail and ImapMail. Search for a similar structure in your backups, e.g. search for abook.mab, which exists in every TB profile.
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In the profile folder backup, open the Mail or ImapMail subfolders, depending on whether the account is POP or IMAP. Then, open the subfolder named after the account, e.g. pop.gmail.com or imap.namesco.com. In the account subfolder, look for mbox files - large files with no extension and named after folders, e.g. Inbox, Sent. Copy the mbox files into the Mail/Local Folders location of the current profile, while TB is closed. When you restart TB, the folders should appear under Local Folders in the Folder Pane. Help/Troubleshooting, click Show in Finder to open the profile.
I apologise for not responding earlier. I had checked the box for being warned when my question was answered - but nothing came. It was only by accident that I noticed your response, i.e. when I continued looking for answers to my request.
Another apology. Although I have many years experience in using macs, I still get confused by terminology. What is the 'profile folder backup/?
Réiteach Roghnaithe
You said you had backups, so if they included the TB profile folder, you can recover mbox files (mail folders) and copy them into the current profile. Help/Troubleshooting, click Show in Finder to open the current profile, where you can see the profile's location and folder structure with Mail and ImapMail. Search for a similar structure in your backups, e.g. search for abook.mab, which exists in every TB profile.
Thank you for your help. It proved decisive.
It took me some time however to decode your advice. It is clear once you know where the Thunderbird folder is and what it contains.
Eventually I did the following (in my terminology). I opened my Thunderbird folder on Time machine: under library in my home folder. I noticed that the inbox and inbox.msf files on June 14 were 11.24 GB and on the next day 675 mb. I copied the two large files (box and inbox.msf) of June 14 from Timemachine to another disk and then put them in the Thunderbird folder (under archives) on my home disk - having closed Thunderbird and disconnected my wifi. The files that disappeared could then be opened again.
What is a bit strange is that I miss two days (I tried to identify the inbox and inbox.msf before and after the loss of content). It may be due to the way Time machine works. Anyway, I can live with the loss (I already requested a resend where it seemed important).