Restoring Apple Mail and Your Emails from Time Machine
UPDATE (25 August 2010): Please note that this post is well over 2 years old and as Tim pointed out in the comments below, this method may not be the best solution for restoring emails. According to his restore efforts, changes where made to the timestamp from the date in which they were received to the date in which they were restored. I have not tested this myself.
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The hard drive on my PowerBook completely died the other day, but I luckily had been running Time Machine backups since upgrading to Leopard. (I wasn’t all that pissed off seeing as I was eager for an excuse to replace my wimpy 40Gb hard drive with a new 160Gb drive). I fumbled a bit, looking for a specific Apple Mail restore tool. I knew where all my emails lived, but I thought that Apple would have a specific means for restoring apps like Mail. So I created this mini-tutorial on how to restore Apple Mail from Time Machine simply because I could not find this method elsewhere.
Supposedly, If you attach your Time Machine backup drive, open Apple Mail then launch the Time Machine application, you are presented with historical views of Apple Mail. This did not work for me, the historical views were just blank, so the steps below do not take this approach.
Restoring Your Emails from a Time Machine Backup
Warning: If you have already setup Apple Mail with your accounts and preferences, this will negate ALL your doings.
Note: This process will restore all your email accounts, preferences, passwords, smart mailboxes, etc.
The How-To
- Before loading Time Machine, open the Finder and navigate to Home Folder (username) -> Library. In there will be a folder name “Mail”. Rename it to “Mail (default)” (Select the folder then hit the Return key to rename).
- Mount your Time Machine Backup Drive (ahem, plug it in).
- Control + Click the Time Machine Application and chose “Browse Other Time Machine disks…”. This, of course, brings up the historical view of your backups.
- Go back to your most recent backup (2nd window back) and navigate to Home Folder (username) -> Library. Select the “Mail” folder and click the restore button (bottom right).
- Once the restore is completed, open Apple Mail and you will be presented with an import wizard (below). Simply follow through the prompts and you will be good to go.
That’s it!
UPDATE (20-January-2009): After step 4., also restore ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
Thanks Jon C.
If you have multiple mail accounts, you should also restore the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist file as well. This will ensure all of your account settings are imported. - Jon C.
May 13th, 2008 at 11:11 am
Thanks it’s a great hint, you should post it in macosxhints.com
May 19th, 2008 at 3:28 am
Awesome content and great instructions even for stupid people like me. Thank you so much for posting this. It worked like a charm and really is appreciated at 2:30 a.m. after hours of reinstalling junk.
June 23rd, 2008 at 9:15 am
This worked. However, I had three email accounts, and it only imported one. My Smart Mailboxes were not imported either.
July 30th, 2008 at 2:50 pm
If you have multiple mail accounts, you should also restore the ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist file as well. This will ensure all of your account settings are imported.
August 26th, 2008 at 11:23 am
Raffy,
This tip is worth it’s weight in gold! Thanks so much for posting such a well though out recipe for a Mail Rescue operation.
Just put Jon’s advice on the article, that is also very valuable!
Take care,
Joseph Hurtado
from Toronto
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
You saved my life! Thanks!
January 19th, 2009 at 12:08 am
Cheers Great tip! Thank you very much for your time!
January 19th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
I’m thinking about reformatting my computer because its bogging down and needs a larger drive. i have 16gigs of ram so i know its not that. i will be installing it onto a 1tb drive instead. i’ve used time machine to back up since day one and i’ve used it to reload my wife’s macbook when we changed out her hard drives. so i know it does restore all but i have 8 email accounts and i can only find one folder that is labeled com.apple.builtin.mailaccounts and inside that folder does that 1 file called MailAccounts.plist. does this have all my email accounts in it?
i looked at JonC’s post and he said look for the com.apple.mail.plist
and i could not find that file on my computer? i’m running a mac pro and all emails for this business are vital.
i’m actualy scared to do this knowing i have 8 email accounts and over 13,000 emails
January 20th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
Hey Logik,
It’s daunting… I know. For some level of piece of mind, before you wipe your drive, you could create a temporary account on your wife’s MacBook, log in, then restore your Emails on it.
I do not believe you want com.apple.builtin.mailaccounts which I am assuming you found somewhere in ~/library/mail/.
I am not sure why com.apple.mail.plist would be missing on your machine. Try opening the finder and navigating directly to:
HardDisk/Users/YOURNAME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
Then try the same on TimeMachine…
January 22nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
Is there a way to restore just the program and not all the emails?
I think that my program has gotten corrupted-everytime I try to check mail, the little “thingy” just spins and spins and the activity monitor gets stuck a single email and goes no further.
Quit mail does nothing and the only way that I can shut the program off is to force quit it.
It is not a problem with my ISP-I can check mail fine on my other box.
Suggestions appreciated.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:01 am
Great - worked first time thanks.
(Re-installed after sleep would no longer work properly due to a bad driver)
Thank You
- Andrew
July 28th, 2009 at 2:04 am
Fantastic. Thank you. Great tip. Saved a lot of time - after I had already spent lots of time and really not got very far. 30,000 emails restored . Thank you - a ’sanity’ saver!
August 11th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
Thank You very much for sharing this solution.
All the best
Ulrik
September 6th, 2009 at 8:27 am
Yep, it worked. excellent. Thanks !
September 26th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Confirmed: this works for Mac OS 10.6.1 as well. Thanks for the tip!
February 3rd, 2010 at 9:47 am
Ich lese deinen Blog jetzt doch schon eine ganze weile aber irgendwie hab ich nie einen Kommentar zu deinen Artikeln geschrieben. Wollte jetzt aber endlich mal ein Lob aussprechen, sind richtig gute Artikel welche du hier jedes mal schreibst. Ich hoffe es kommen noch einige weitere interessante Artikel.
March 7th, 2010 at 7:21 pm
Wow! Your instructions just saved my life!!! thank you!!!!
April 18th, 2010 at 4:07 pm
This solution is NOT an optimal method of restoring one’s email. Following the instructions to rename your Mail folder in the Library will result in Apple Mail re-importing your email (as described above), and time-stamping those imported emails as “received” on the date of importing, NOT the date you originally received them! Hence, all those emails that you may have saved from 1 and 2 years ago now show up in Mail as having been received at the time of your import - today, for example! This totally messed up my Inbox, and now I have to go back and restore the standard way - without first renaming the Mail folder.
May 17th, 2010 at 11:32 am
Das ist ein interessanter Post - freue mich mehr zu lesen.