Restoring "Lost" email files

[SandraSkinner]

Hi. I've been having major gnashing of teeth on several email account settings... worked great for a long time and then, >POOF< general nastiness. Anyhow, in my attempts to set things right, I became desperate and actually deleted one account in order to start fresh with the settings. When I cam back to Mail, no surprise, the entire list of five years' emails were there with no content. I did the "rebuild" thing which promptly removed everything but the last three entries. So after two hours of internet search I have located the hidden files which seem to be intact for the most part under Library/Mail/V2/ but I have no idea why Mail is not accessing them or how to get it to. Any ideas?