Mail deleted from POP server after 10.7 upgrade

[mamatroll]

I am hoping someone can give me advice about emails that were accidentally deleted from the server when I upgraded to 10.7. The emails I want to save or restore are still in my Mail account on my Mac Pro, but they have been deleted from the server because the upgrade had "delete viewed messages from server" checked in the settings. I have 3 accounts Gmail, AOL, and POP, but only the POP account has been affected.My questions are:

1. If I used Time Machine to restore my Mail to before the mail was deleted from the server, will it be restored to the online server mailbox also? (I upgraded from Tiger to Lion, so the TM mail might be in the old OS -- a problem?)

2. If the above is not feasible, how can I preserve over 5000 messages that are still in the Mail boxes on my Mac (particularly Inbox and Sent)?

3. If I move all the email messages to the "On my Mac" folder in Mail will that save them to the HD on my Mac? Can I then copy them to an external HD? If yes, would they be searchable?

Hope these questions are worded so that my needs have been made clear.

Mamatroll

 

[MisterMe]

...

1. If I used Time Machine to restore my Mail to before the mail was deleted from the server, will it be restored to the online server mailbox also? ...

Of course not. Time Machine backs-up your Mac, not every other computer on Earth.

2. If the above is not feasible, how can I preserve over 5000 messages that are still in the Mail boxes on my Mac (particularly Inbox and Sent)?

Don't delete them. If you like, then you may create additional mailboxes to store and organize the messages in your Inbox.

3. If I move all the email messages to the "On my Mac" folder in Mail will that save them to the HD on my Mac? Can I then copy them to an external HD? If yes, would they be searchable?

For our IMAP messages, moving them to On My Mac will create copies on your hard drive. However, the originals remain on the server. For your POP3 messages, copies of the messages that you have not deleted are on your hard drive now.

 

[r0k]

Ok there IS a way around this but it's involved.

First of all STOP USING POP. Never use pop again.

Second of all, once you set up email on a service that supports IMAP, you can "import" all that email you downloaded that was deleted from the server. In fact, if you are using a provider that supports IMAP, you can put it back on the very server it just got deleted from but you have to switch off POP and start using IMAP. IMAP was created with multiple email clients in mind. If you mark something read on one computer or device, it shows up read everywhere. If you fetch a message from your smartphone, it's still there to be fetched when you power on your computer when you get home.

I used Thunderbird to do this. It might be possible with Mail.app but I used Thunderbird because it could import my old Windows Eudora and Thunderbird format mailboxes so I could get them imported to gmail so all my email would be searchable in one place.

Step 1, assuming your provider supports IMAP is to change your email settings to use IMAP.

Step 2, Create a "folder" on your mac, underneath your inbox. Make sure it's a folder underneath your IMAP provider's inbox, not just your mail.app inbox. Each account inbox is shown further down.

Step 3, Verify that the folder you just created in mail.app shows up online. If it does you are a few clicks away from having all your mail back where it belongs.

Step 4, Copy messages from your main inbox (that were deleted by that badly behaved POP) and paste them in the new folder you just created. Go for a walk, drink a cup of coffee, watch an episode of Dr. Who.

Now all your email is back on your mail server because Thunderbird uploaded them for you.

The following steps assume your provider does NOT support IMAP and you are faced with changing providers:

Step 1, Create a new gmail account.

Step 2, Forward all mail from your old POP account to your new gmail account.

Step 3, perform the steps above only use your new gmail account instead. The messages you import won't show up in "inbox" but they will show up under the folder you will create in steps 1-4 above(called labels in gmail).

POP is old fashioned. POP is bad. POP existed when email account quotas were measured in kilobytes and NOBODY in their right mind wanted to leave messages on a server. POP existed before there was more than one way to retrieve mail and everybody that ever wrote a POP email client, even Apple, arrogantly presumed that you wanted your email deleted from the server when it was fetched.

First of all, never take a POP account online until you first turn off "delete fetched messages from server". Better yet, stop using POP3.

 

[MisterMe]

.... It might be possible with Mail.app but I used Thunderbird because it could import my old Windows Eudora and Thunderbird format mailboxes so I could get them imported to gmail so all my email would be searchable in one place.

...

Mail has been able to do this since MacOS X 10.0.

 

[mamatroll]

Thanks

Thanks MrMe and Rok. I know I must sound like an idiot but sometimes wonderous things that I don't really understand can happen with computers. It would sure be nice if Time Machine could do stuff with every computer on Earth -- but I get it. Your response gave me a chuckle.

And RoK's explanation
"First of all, never take a POP account online until you first turn off "delete fetched messages from server". Better yet, stop using POP3. " made me look up POP, POP3 and IMAP to see what those things were. Previously, I just filled in the fields with whatever the ISP tech told me to put in them, kind of like someone who doesn't understand HOW electricity works but understands a light will come on if plugged in and turned on.

I will try to get Thunderbird and follow your instructions with a gmail account. My provider, Time Warner Cable, said they only support POP for mail accounts, so I guess I'm stuck with that if I want to use email accounts provided by them.

 

[r0k]

Thanks MrMe and Rok. I know I must sound like an idiot but sometimes wonderous things that I don't really understand can happen with computers. It would sure be nice if Time Machine could do stuff with every computer on Earth -- but I get it. Your response gave me a chuckle.

And RoK's explanation
"First of all, never take a POP account online until you first turn off "delete fetched messages from server". Better yet, stop using POP3. " made me look up POP, POP3 and IMAP to see what those things were. Previously, I just filled in the fields with whatever the ISP tech told me to put in them, kind of like someone who doesn't understand HOW electricity works but understands a light will come on if plugged in and turned on.

I will try to get Thunderbird and follow your instructions with a gmail account. My provider, Time Warner Cable, said they only support POP for mail accounts, so I guess I'm stuck with that if I want to use email accounts provided by them.

Having to use POP isn't the end of the world as long as you remember to check "leave mail on server". I had a provider that told me they only supported POP. I had called their support and threatened to close my account if they didn't support IMAP and they just said "sorry". So I was ready to close my account but I decided to try one thing first. I ignored what they told me and set up mail.app to fetch from their server using IMAP and sure enough it worked. It was an "undocumented feature".

 

[mattygk1]

Deleted all my POP Emails - Retrieve?

I was wanting to remove my POP email with yahoo, which has 5000 received and sent emails (important for work). I did not realize all these emails would be erased. I erased them on my iMac by hitting the '-' sign. My objective was to utilize the IMAP going forwards and not to erase my entire iMac email history!

How can I get those emails back? I do have a Time Capsule back-up which I just purchased and is updated.

Ideas?