lost emails

[jesper]

Does super Duper back up your emails and if so how do you recover them?
As you all can guess I lost some valuable emails probably my own fault.
Thanks in advance,
Jesper

[dnanian]

If your emails are cached on your drive, we do back them up. The challenge here is to ensure you don't accidentally "sync" to a server if you've accidentally deleted email (and also emptied your trash), assuming you have an Exchange, Gmail or IMAP account.

So, first make sure any network is NOT available. You don't want to accidentally connect to it.

Then, start up from the backup. Start Mail. You won't be online at this point, so your mail should be whatever was there when you backed up.

Find the email you want, and use Mail's export command to export it somewhere convenient - like on the original drive, in Users/your-user/Desktop (so it's on your desktop) for example.

Then, start back up from your original drive. Import that mail, and there you go.

[jesper]

Dave
thanks for your reply. Yes it is Google. I'll try your suggestion

[jesper]

sorry Dave
Not very good at this.. Probably why I lost the emails..
Do you mean boot up from the external back up drive?
When I restart holding down the option key I get the message: choose a network... I choose none and the computer boots up on the external drive.. when I open the external drive and go to applications , mail is not in the application list.
I'm running Catalina

[dnanian]

Did you back up Catalina with v3.3 or v3.25? It sounds like you're using a version that isn't compatible with Catalina...

[jesper]

Yes Sir
I'm running v3.25
Thanks again for your timeMuch appreciated
Jesper

[dnanian]

Unfortunately, v3.2.5 is not Catalina compatible. So, you likely backed up the "Data" volume. On that will be your Mail folder, but it's going to take some work to find it.

Use Finder's Go To Folder command to open

/Volumes/the-superduper-backup-drive/Users/your-user/Library

substituting appropriately. Once there, you should see a folder named "Mail". Copy that to your Desktop.

Then, making sure Mail isn't running, you'll want to use Go To Folder to open

~/Library

When there, rename the Mail folder to, say, Mail.old. Then move the Mail folder on your Desktop here.

Make sure your networking is off. Open Mail.

Locate the email. Export it as explained above, to your desktop. Quit Mail.

Move the Mail folder back to your desktop. Rename the Mail.old back to Mail.

Start Mail. Import the mail you exported. Turn your network back on.