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+--- Thread: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! (/showthread.php?tid=55237)
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Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - Mr Downtown - 05-20-2008
For some reason, mail.app has been refusing to retrieve messages from my RCN mailbox. It retrieves the ones from gmail just fine, and I can get the RCN messages through webmail (so I know the login and password work).
I thought it would be a good idea to delete the RCN account from mail.app and then add it back in, in case something about the login or password had gotten corrupted. But when I deleted the RCN account, all the messages in my inbox and--more important--my outbox have disappeared. Undo is grayed out, but I haven't yet quit mail.app. Can I save my old messages somehow? I don't find anything called "sent.mbox" or similar in my Trash.
Re: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - mstudio - 05-20-2008
Look in your user's folder>Library>Mail. When you delete an account, the mail is gone, but maybe you'll get lucky.
Good luck.
Re: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - GrumpyOldMan - 05-20-2008
And you didn't read the "Are you sure" message that said:
"The account’s setup information, mailboxes, messages, notes, and to do’s will be deleted permanently from your computer."
Before you clicked "Remove"?
Re: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - Mr Downtown - 05-20-2008
I took the precaution of saving a copy of my inbox, but it never occurred to me that it would also delete messages sent five years ago just because they came from that account.
Re: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - Ken Sp. - 05-20-2008
Are you using Leopard and Time Machine?
Re: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - MysteryGuest - 05-20-2008
I got bitten by this bug a couple of years ago and you have my sympathy. I never found a way to get the messages back. And I endured a lot of mockery on DealMac.
Re: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - modelamac - 05-20-2008
The message says it deletes all mail, or something to that effect, and cannot be undone. What part of that did you not understand?
In Home/Library/Mail/POP account you might be able to recover it. See what is in "Deleted Messages" folder (Get Info)
The other question I have is you should be able to get the mail back by going to your backup drive, or the Time Machine drive. These do exist, right?
Re: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - MysteryGuest - 05-20-2008
I will always maintain that this is the stupidest, most un-Maclike thing I ever encountered. Why, why, why should deleting an account delete all associated mail? Who'd ever want that? Why should it be the default?
And by the way, if I ever go back to Mail, how the heck do you then get rid of an old account?
Re: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - M A V I C - 05-20-2008
Ok, ok. I've been avoiding this thread because I think I was one of "those people" over at DM that gave MysteryGuest a hard time. I do agree that a message saying "delete all mail" should indeed delete all mail. There should be a "reset account settings" button or something like that. But really, deleting an account isn't a good way at solving such a problem.
You can archive an old account, or drag and drop the messages you want to keep into other folders. The email is kept in inbox.sent, inbox.drafts, inbox.junk... so if you delete "inbox" then all of the associated boxes go away as well.
Personally I use IMAP so even if I pitch my computer out of a jet a 30,000 feet and and drops onto a glacier below, I still have my email.
Re: Help: deleting mail.app account deletes old messages! - olnacl - 05-20-2008
[quote M A V I C]Personally I use IMAP so even if I pitch my computer out of a jet a 30,000 feet and and drops onto a glacier below, I still have my email.
But then when the IMAP mailbox gets full.....