.Mac lost all my email - please help ASAP

[applemax]

I have a .Mac email-only account using IMAP. I was alerted that my inbox was full (when I was looking at webmail) so I removed all the messages from webmail (assuming they'd remain on my Mac permanently). I get back home and they're all gone.

3 questions:

How did this happen?
Can I get them back?
If not, why?

Thanks,

and please help as soon as you can as there was some important stuff in there.

 

[applemax]

will someone please help me - this is extremely urgent

 

[garybUK]

unless you backed them up, your screwed, .Mac mail is IMAPv4 based, the messages are stored on the server and not your computer. So if u deleted them off the webmail system they are gone off the server which your mac looks at anyway.

 

[iMeowbot]

How did this happen?

The messages are gone because you deleted them.

Can I get them back?

If you didn't copy or move the messages to a local folder before deleting them from the IMAP server, probably not. Mail.app and other mail clients do have an option to "download" IMAP messages, but this operates as a cache rather than a backup. If you already started up Mail and connected to the IMAP server, that cache is going to have been deleted by now.

You might try to play with disk recovery software to see if any fragments of those cached message files are still on the drive, but there is no guarantee that it will work completely or at all. You might also try begging .Mac support to see if they can dredge up any backups on their end, but I wouldn't depend on their being able to help you either.

will someone please help me - this is extremely urgent

The urgency kind of goes away when things are already hosed

 

[AgencyDigital]

!

 

[Dark Dragoon]

I think you can get them back if you use Time Machine.

In the future if you run out of space, you can increase the amount available for storing emails by logging onto me.com, going into the settings section, then click on mail and iDisk storage settings and increase the amount available for email. Though this assumes your idisk isn't full as well.

EDIT: I'll leave this here. Didn't realise the thread was old and had been bumped...

 

[aristobrat]

I think you can get them back if you use Time Machine.

Good point for anyone who stumbles across this in the future, but Leopard wasn't out yet when the OP had this issue.