After several recent columns on the vagaries of pull off Time Machine backup , including how to cut back shot and ensure you do n’t cancel files from the backups you want to keep , Macworld reader Janet wrote in asking about how Time Machine interacts with email .
She inquire how Time Machine creates a backup of e-mail substance , give that Mail stores these messages in what appear to be a filing cabinet or database formatting . And what happens if you delete an email subject matter months ago and desire to think it ?
look can be deceive : while mailboxes look monolithic , Apple stores each message and fond regard discretely , which is in part to allow Spotlight indexing and per - subject matter backups . you may see how messages are organized in~/Library / Mail / V5 / and lucubrate down into any pamphlet that has a name with a combining of letters , phone number , and hyphens .
chain armour fund content as files , but presents them in the form of mailboxes .
To find an sure-enough electronic mail message that was delete from a Time Machine archive , you open Mail , get in Time Machine , and scroll back to the engagement at which you believe the email last existed . Then you could find it in the appropriate mailbox .
While other local and cloud patronage software program , like Arq , Backblaze , ChronoSync , SpiderOak , and CrashPlan , also back up these case-by-case post message file , there ’s no dear elbow room to load or retrieve just deleted messages you want to retrieve — they’re much harder to incur , and you ’ll most likely pull up an entire erstwhile mailbox and then import it into chain mail to front through .
delete messages accidentally is of course something you ca n’t stave off . But I recommend being more knowing about email . Most of use host - side email ( IMAP ) , which rent you retain messages on your mail waiter but gain access code to locally cached copies on any computer or mobile machine . For subject matter I require to be sure to keep , and not be dependant on a server to retrieve by and by , I drag them on my main Mac to a leaflet in the On My Mac section of the Mail seafaring toolbar . Then these messages are not only local and persistent , but easier to identify afterward as important .
Once you move a content in this fashion , it ’s no longer on your server explanation , so it willonlybe useable from the Mac to which you copied it , but that ’s often exactly what you require for older messages you need to keep on .
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