Disappearing Emails - Email specialist required!

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Level 7

22,391 points

Disappearing Emails - Email specialist required!

I keep most of my emails for reference purposes and had thousands going back four years.

For various reasons I decided to delete the originals from my BT Yahoo online account only to discover that all the old emails in my Apple Mail on my computer had also disappeared.

I had always assumed that the emails were a physical entity on my Mac once they had been downloaded and appeared in Mail.

So why have they disappeared?

Have they gone forever or can they be recovered?

iMac 27" 5K, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jun 1, 2019 1:12 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Luis Sequeira1

Level 9

67,606 points

Jun 1, 2019 1:32 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

It depends on the type of account.

It appears that you may have an IMAP account. With IMAP, your e-mail client will mimic what is in the server.

Your best bet is to login to your account using webmail and see if the stuff you deleted is still in the trash.

For the future, you should note that on the Mail sidebar there is a “On my Mac”. Any mailboxes you create “On my Mac” are stored - you guessed it - on your mac, and independently of any of your accounts, they will remain even if your account is disconnected or is removed altogether.

When you want to retain a message but delete it from the server, move it some mailbox under “On my Mac”.

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Answer 2

LD150

Level 10

91,341 points

Jun 2, 2019 2:54 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/54829/~/bt-yahoo-mail---i’ve-lost-or-deleted-some-of-my-emails.-can-i-recover-them%3F

We can only restore emails that have been lost or deleted within the last seven days

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Answer 3

Ian R. Brown Author

Level 7

22,391 points

Jun 1, 2019 1:43 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks for the rapid response Luis.

Unfortunately I was very thorough and also emptied the trash on my account.

Another thing I don't understand is that before I deleted everything online, I could view my emails in Mail even when the computer was not connected to the internet, so the emails appeared to have some physical presence on my Mac at that time.

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Answer 4

Jun 1, 2019 4:14 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Your mac would keep at least the headers and possibly complete email messages for offline viewing. The problem is that when you then connected to the server Mail dutifully synced its contents with the server, as it was supposed to do, so the copies you had on your mac were deleted.

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Answer 5

LD150

Level 10

91,341 points

Jun 1, 2019 6:29 AM in response to Ian R. Brown

Sign into your mail account in a browser again .(ie online webmail)

Some providers like Outlook.com allow you to recover deleted emails.

BTY may be the same.

You cannot do that with a client like Mail.

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Answer 6

Ian R. Brown Author

Level 7

22,391 points

Jun 2, 2019 2:19 AM in response to LD150

Thanks for the further information from both of you.

I have a strong feeling that having deleted the emails and then the trash, the emails will probably be unrecoverable.

I wonder how many other people save over 90% of their emails routinely? I do it for the odd (rare) occasion where it can be helpful to review what has been said previously but find that the Mail folder can quickly expand into the gigabytes!

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