HELP, lost all my mail!!! really urgent

[buckuxc]

Ok, this is WAY beyond me. I've lost all of my in/out/sent/draft box emails! I was once again having problems with Mail.app's outgoing server prefs. I had Mail set up to receive mail from university account, but to send mail through my own personal website email server/domain because I couldn't send mail from off campus through the university smtp server. Recently my server has been rejecting the outgoing email at first and then I resend it and, sometimes I have to try 2 or 3 times, and then it finally would send. However, I won't be paying for the server space anymore soon, so I figured I'd better change it sooner rather than later. I went into preferences and changed the outgoing server for the only account I have in there to the campus server, and then tried sending email while on campus (should have worked). Except, Mail REFUSED to even TRY the campus server. It kept trying to send through my asidesoflife.org domain. And even when I forced it to recognize and send through the campus server, it WOULD NOT send the email. I was getting annoyed because these emails needed to go out. I sent the through webmail and then went back to the problem with Mail.

Well, I made a stupid mistake. I tried just removing the account (the only one I had) from the account list in Mail's pref pane....and ALL OF MY MAIL DISAPPEARED...at least, all of it that wasn't in separate folders that I created. EVERYTHING from my inbox, outbox, sent box, and draft box is GONE....GONE

What do I do now??? Please...someone...tell me...there's...hope...anything??? is it all still somewhere on my computer???

 

[robbieduncan]

Mail stores all your local mail in ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/

If you can see it there then take a copy NOW and then try importing that mailbox back into mail. If it's not there then it's gone.

 

[robbieduncan]

Ok looking at my own ~/Library/Mail folder it looks like the Mailboxes folder is for your local mailboxes. I also have a folder called IMAP-robbieduncan@mail.mac.com that holds my Deleted/Sent/Junk/INBOX imapmbox files. If this folder is deleted when you remove an account you have lost these folders (unless they are stored on the server perhaps?)

 

[buckuxc]

but

Those boxes didn't even go into the trash, though....they just plain disappeared? There's absolutely no way to recover ANY of it? This...is...so un-Mac like...I mean...really now...I'm beyond words...

 

[superbovine]

Those boxes didn't even go into the trash, though....they just plain disappeared? There's absolutely no way to recover ANY of it? This...is...so un-Mac like...I mean...really now...I'm beyond words...

the "so un-Mac like..." is sort of funny. needless to say here is what you need to do if the data you lost is critical. first, stop writing data on your hard disk. that includes surfing the internet or doing anything. the more data you write to you hard drive it lessen the chance of recovery. now you have two choices. get some file recovery software or take it a hard drive recovery place (just google). taking to a place will cost you a lot of dough, but you seen like you don't know what you are doing so it will probably be worth it. Software link can be found below. anyways remember to download and install it a seperate disk than where the data is stored if possible. remember the more data you write on your hard drive it has the possibility of making the data you want to recovery, unrecoverable.

http://www.subrosasoft.com/thestore/default.php