Recovering email for deleted Mail account?

**gazanson** · March 14th, 2006, 05:31 PM

I recently decided to install and run Thunderbird as my new email client. I would occasionally go back to Mail to view earlier emails. This could be a bit of a nuisance though since Mail insisted on updating itself and downloading all the mail that had arrived for my account since I last opened the application. I thought the way to stop this so I could search my old Inbox in peace was to delete my account details. I didn't realise this would also delete the Inbox. Does anyone know whether/if/how I can recover this old mail. Simply reentering my old account details was not enough to 'restore' the old Inbox. Many thanks for any help. Gary

**gazanson** · March 14th, 2006, 05:36 PM

Hmmm. I see others have reported this 'problem'. Nothing can be done it seems! Sigh ...

PS Obviously the Mail application needs to provide a bit of handholding here to alert users that removing an account automatically trashes all the email too!

**ra3ndy** · March 14th, 2006, 05:40 PM

No problem. Just go under Mail's File menu to "Import Mailboxes", & choose "Mail for Mac OS X" from the list. From there, navigate to Users/[your user]/Library/Mail/ and find your account folder (should be named something like "POP-user@url.com@mail.url.com").

Edit: If no folder of similar name is there, then yeah, you're pretty much outta luck.

From there, select that folder and hit "Choose". It will show you all the mailboxes in that folder and let you add the ones you need.

In the future, to keep your Mail account from retrieving new mail, open Mail's Preferences (Mail menu --> Preferences) and click the "Accounts" tab, then on the "Advanced" tab. Uncheck the checkbox next to "Include when automatically checking for new mail" and close the window. Confirm, and you're good to go!

Hope that helps.

**Qion** · March 14th, 2006, 06:11 PM

If you're like me, email accounts are also accessible online.

Maybe you can get it that way; most ISP's and mail servers shouldn't have deleted all your old stuff...

**fryke** · March 14th, 2006, 07:11 PM

That depends on whether it's an IMAP4 or POP3 account. IMAP accounts are based on the thought that you leave the mail on the server and manage the accounts online, whereas a POP account is made with the thought that you download your mail and manage it in your E-Mail client.

**Qion** · March 14th, 2006, 07:34 PM

Hmm, then what is Gmail considered?

**Beggi1** · November 2nd, 2010, 08:17 PM

I just made this mistake but have recovered from it after some trials and tribulations and thought I'd share the solution I found. I went to Time Machine and recovered yesterday's IMAP folder for the relevant account from:

Users/[your user]/Library/Mail/

Then I made a new Mailbox in mail, found that folder and copied the contents of the recovered IMAP folder into this Mailbox folder in my Library/Mail/Mailboxes via the Finder. Finally, I went into the Mail application and clicked on that new Mailbox folder and then clicked "Rebuild" under the Mailbox menu. My old messages populated this mailbox and can now be searched etc.

**seekir** · July 18th, 2012, 09:29 PM

No problem. Just go under Mail's File menu to "Import Mailboxes", & choose "Mail for Mac OS X" from the list.

Nope, this doesn't seem to work if the account has been deleted when changing ISP's/email addresses. Only the new POP account appears in the library folder. Having been with the same ISP and using one email address for over a decade I was unfamiliar with the mac Mail account management process and lost all my archived email records upon deleting my original account. Seems Time Machine is not available for "PowerPC" macs like mine only capable of running 10.4.11. Can't say I'm real pleased by this software flaw which I'm guessing has caused significant problems for others like me.