Lost Mailboxes in Mail.app

[John Varela]

I have many -- hundreds -- of emails sorted into dozens of Mailboxes in Mail.app, These are things like conversations with others about genealogy research, email receipts, and so forth.

Don't ask me how this happened because I don't know. First, somehow the Trash files disappeared from the two iCloud addresses (two Apple IDs), each replaced by a second, empty Archive mailbox. (The gmail and Microsoft Exchange addresses were unaffected. ) I deleted the empty Archive mailboxes and, when I deleted the second one, all my dozens of mailboxes with saved messages suddnely disappeared.

Working with the help of a woman at Apple Support, we found at least some of the emails in /username/Library/Mail/Mail Lost+Found, so it appears that the problem is that the data are still there but the linkage from the app to the data has been broken.

Can anyone help restore it?

If not then I have a Time Machine backup and a current Super Duper backup. I'm willing to wipe the drive and reinstall from the backup, but these modern backups don't include the OS, only user data. So can anyone tell me how to wipe user data only and replace from backup?

Or where to find some Mac guru who can fix this mess.

 

[Satcomer]

I find sometimes Updates can do something like this! It's good to know where in Tim Machine to go back and get that missing folder! Another way is more human error by accidentally deleting the highlighted folder by mistake with Fat Fingers!

 

[John Varela]

Never Mind. I went back to Apple on-line support, was elevated to a second level tech, and he recovered my data. It was complicated. I couldn't begin to retrace the steps we went through.