Can I reverse "remove copy from server"?

Is your ISP email on a POP server or an IMAP server?

Comcast is not IMAP - it’s POP 3. Unfortunately, communication with POP3 is only one way. Messages go down but not up. That is the nature of the protocol.

Don't know how many emails were talking about here and this is an imperfect solution, but you could forward the lost emails to your Comcast email address to get them back on the Comcast server. Of course, they'll show as being received from you and not the original senders, but would get message content back on the server for archive/search purposes. Maybe add the original sender info to the subject line?

I've not tested this yet but this one possible partial solution could be to

1 set up a gmail account (which is IMAP)

2 add this gmail account to mac mail

3 in mac mail go to your comcast mail inbox

4 block select some messages (click on one, scroll down a bit then hold Shift key and click on another one to select them as a bunch) They'll now all be highlighted in blue.

5 rightclick on the selected messages and chose the 'Copy to' option from the menu that appears

6 in the 'Copy to' submenu choose the Google mailbox


that'll copy them from your comcast inbox to the gmail inbox in Mac Mail, and as the Gmail inbox is IMAP a copy will go up to the Gmail mail server (which will then make them available on any device you set Gmail up on, rather than just stuck locally on the mail folder of one mac)

downsides:

1 if you try to reply to any of them you'll be replying from the Gmail account, so may only be suitable for archive purposes

2 you'll have a split between bundle of stuff archived on Gmail and future stuff sat on Comcast (unless you repeat that process every month or so, or set Gmail up to retrieve copies of any future Comcast mail)

3 You'll need to add the Gmail mail account on to any device you want to access them on

Warning

looks to work OK at my end, has taken all the mail I threw at it retained original dates attachments etc, but I've not tested it fully yet

(I copied couple of hundred emails over in one go, and everything looks to have gone over ok but I've still to check n see if there's anything missing in a full side by side compare)

If you do decide to give it a try I'd stick with selecting couple of hundred at a time to do the 'Copy to' rather than select every single message and throwing them over in a single dump. Less chance of the Mail app or the Gmail server chocking on them, and easier to pick up from where you left off again if it does.

Oh and remember to use the right click menu's Copy To option - if you just drag n drop a bundle of selected emails from one inbox to the other it'll do a move rather than a copy (which could end up getting messy)

should add I chose GMail to test this but should work same on any other IMAP based email host if you aren't keen on Google for some reason or other

even if its not particularly useful from an accessing the mail archive pov, it's probably worth doing just to ensure you don't have all your years n years of email archive tied to a single mailbox on the local hard drive of that one mac

Snorkelman, any reason the OP couldnt use your procedure, slightly amended so instead of copying to gmails inbox, its copied to a corresponding folder on gmail he created? This assumes he has his email sorted into folders in comcast.

Tumbleweed666 said:

Snorkelman, any reason the OP couldnt use your procedure, slightly amended so instead of copying to gmails inbox, its copied to a corresponding folder on gmail he created? This assumes he has his email sorted into folders in comcast.

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no reason at all, if you create appropriate folders in gmail inbox you can copy the mail over to whichever you please

snorkelman said:

downsides:

1 if you try to reply to any of them you'll be replying from the Gmail account, so may only be suitable for archive purposes

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Don't know about Gmail, but Yahoo mail (IMAP) allows you access other email accounts via Yahoo webmail. You can also get the option to send mail from Yahoo mail as if from the other account (i.e. sent from/reply to will appear as the other account). Assume this would work for the OP's Comcast account.

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Also, too, there's this:

New Comcast IMAP servers and email settings
Options
‎

I found this link today, and I signed up for having my email switched over to IMAP.

https://xcsignup.comcast.net/onboardingapps/imap

The link states that my email account will be migrated over to IMAP servers in 24 hours, and I will receive a confirmation email.

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Robisan said:

Don't know about Gmail, but Yahoo mail (IMAP) allows you access other email accounts via Yahoo webmail. You can also get the option to send mail from Yahoo mail as if from the other account (i.e. sent from/reply to will appear as the other account). Assume this would work for the OP's Comcast account.

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Aye Gmail will do that too ..I skipped mentioning it in original post as it can get complicated if an iPhone/iPad is one of the devices the OP wants to add into the mix (e.g. you then need to use Googles Gmail iOS app to get that functionality rather than the default iOS one)

That said if Comcast do offer IMAP as well as Pop mail these days then that would be long term solution

..though I'd still probably stick the stuff onto a Gmail account first. Just in case there's issues arise from having same comcast account trying to exist in mac mail in both IMAP and pop versions at same time

@snorkelman (Newbie mac question) Does Macmail have an export function that can create an archive file of all messages? If not, is there a system file/folder that contains the messages that could be copied to another location and could then be restored back if there are problems?

Having already screwed the OP once, there must be some way in Macmail (or iCloud?) to ensure it doesn't screw him/her again when trying to migrate this content.

Robisan said:

@snorkelman (Newbie mac question) Does Macmail have an export function that can create an archive file of all messages? If not, is there a system file/folder that contains the messages that could be copied to another location and could then be restored back if there are problems?

Having already screwed the OP once, there must be some way in Macmail (or iCloud?) to ensure it doesn't screw him/her again when trying to migrate this content.

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yep you can export a mailbox as an .mbox file - rightclick on the mailbox (e.g. Comcast or Google etc) and choose export mailbox from the menu that appears. Then just browse to wherever you want to store it on your mac and create a new folder for it

if something went horribly wrong you could then import the mailbox back into mail (it'll be listed in mail under 'On My Mac' in a folder called Import). Once its restored in there you can then shift select all the messages in it, right click and copy them to an Imap mail account.

8 or 9 years worth of mail with all images attachments could be one hell of a size of export though

plkldf said:

Thanks, folks, that's what I was afraid of. I thought about resending all the messages, but then they wouldn't be in chronological order, and it goes back to 2005 - that's a gargantuan task.

I really feel badly served by this. I think I now am tied to mac mail whenever I want to check my aged comcast messages. And all because Apple chose to set the default to "remove copy from server". Why in the world would that be the default?

I hate mac right now, and I hate mac mail. It serves no purpose that I can see except to tie me to the damned mac. Unless I pay a $99/year subscription to mobileme -- is that right? What a trap I fell into

This is aggravating in the extreme. I do thank you for the kind replies

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Ah, the only one to mad at is yourself, all you had to do was uncheck the remove box in preferences.

snorkelman said:

That said if Comcast do offer IMAP as well as Pop mail these days then that would be long term solution

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Comcast does not offer IMAP - like most ISP’s they still only offer POP3.

plkldf said:

Who would think that a program would strip your inbox of all its messages without permission? It didn't occur to me because it makes no sense.

And, hey, Mac is supposed to be the one you don't have to be a tech wizard to use, right?

Anyway, thanks, folks!

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That’s the default idea behind POP3 - it was built with the idea that you would download the mail you have - back in the day it was built around the idea that you were connecting with a modem and you would not be online 24/7. The host would only provide you with a limited amount of space and you only got your email on one device - there was no reason to store it on the server.

Nowadays that not really the nature of things, but ISP’s haven’t changed their habits. They don’t want to encourage you to keel email on their servers - it’s a lot of work on their end after all and running IMAP is probably more expensive overall. ISP’s have no motive to do this.

It isn’t about the Mac - it’s more about the protocol. The idea of keeping a copy on the server is a hack around the way the protocol - it’s not really the way POP3 was built.

If I ran things, everybody would be using IMAP and use it according to the standard, but that’s not how things work sadly.

pdjudd said:

Comcast does not offer IMAP - like most ISP’s they still only offer POP3.

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According to this page they do offer IMAP. https://xcsignup.comcast.net/onboardingapps/imap

Hmm. That’s news to me. Last I knew, it was POP3 and nothing else.

Thanks for the correction.