Vanished mail

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FrMark
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Joined:December 11th, 2013, 3:39 pm
Vanished mail

Post by FrMark » November 21st, 2017, 5:38 am

MacBook Pro running El Capitan and using the standard Mail program.

Suddenly yesterday morning I discovered that email messages saved in a sub-folder had disappeared. A little later the folder in which that sub-folder sat had also lost all its messages, several hundred in all. There are other sub-folders in it which still exist but are also now empty. I have several other folders which do not SEEM (at present) to have been affected.

Does anyone have any idea how I can recover these, please? They do not seem to be in trash. And of course I now live in fear that my other folders will also gradually empty themselves!

I do back up using Time Machine and imagined that if I restored to a point before the disappearance I might find them - and refile before they disappear again, but I do not seem to have grasped how to restore because after waiting ages I found the MacBook just how I left it, i.e. looking like it had this morning whereas I wanted it like yesterday morning. Evidently I am getting this wrong and advice would be appreciated, please.

Mark
FrMark
8 MB
Posts:14
Joined:December 11th, 2013, 3:39 pm

Re: Vanished mail

Post by FrMark » November 21st, 2017, 9:10 am

It's OK: you can all go back to sleep now. I've discovered that Rebuild, given enough time to sift the hundreds of messages, does indeed recover the mailbox. But patience is definitely needed! Getting there, messages gradually reappearing. Thanks for listening to my unnecessary ramblings ....
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Turboladdade
1024 MB
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Joined:October 31st, 2007, 10:44 pm

Re: Vanished mail

Post by Turboladdade » November 21st, 2017, 12:15 pm

One question for you — is your mail configured to use IMAP or POP?
I am now telling the computer exactly what it can do.
FrMark
8 MB
Posts:14
Joined:December 11th, 2013, 3:39 pm

Re: Vanished mail

Post by FrMark » November 21st, 2017, 3:31 pm

Some of each, mostly POP; some of it webmail. The vanished mail was in a folder which contained mail from several accounts - mostly a POP one. All fine now, though!
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