Recovering Erased Junk Mail

6474 Views 2 Replies 3 Participants Last post by CanadaRAM, Aug 13, 2007

maitland

Discussion Starter · Aug 13, 2007

I had some messages stored in my Junk mailbox: bounce messages from mail servers "no such account" and the like. I wanted to contact the bounced people by telephone. However, the bounced messages have been "erased" due to the following settings:

Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Special Mailboxes:

Junk:
Erase messages in the junk mailbox when:
One week old

Trash:
(x) Move deleted messages to a separate folder
Erase deleted messages when:
One week old

Mail version: 1.3.11 (v622/624)
OS X 10.3.9

Is there anyway to recover these "erased" junk and subsequently "erased" trash messages?

Moving forward, I can fiddle with these settings - or move the messages out of the junk mailbox to process at a later date. All well and good. However, is there any way to recover these "erased" messages?

Thanks in advance!
- tim

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eMacMan

· #2 · Aug 13, 2007

maitland said:
I had some messages stored in my Junk mailbox: bounce messages from mail servers "no such account" and the like. I wanted to contact the bounced people by telephone. However, the bounced messages have been "erased" due to the following settings:

Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Special Mailboxes:

Junk:
Erase messages in the junk mailbox when:
One week old

Trash:
(x) Move deleted messages to a separate folder
Erase deleted messages when:
One week old

Mail version: 1.3.11 (v622/624)
OS X 10.3.9

Is there anyway to recover these "erased" junk and subsequently "erased" trash messages?

Moving forward, I can fiddle with these settings - or move the messages out of the junk mailbox to process at a later date. All well and good. However, is there any way to recover these "erased" messages?

Thanks in advance!
- tim

OK; IF you do regular back ups you may be able to: clone your current system (SuperDuper), then set the computers clock back to the date of the last back-up, restore to that back-up, recover your junk mail, Reset the date & time and restore the original.

Is it worth it? Probably not.

BTW: Junk boxes and trash bins should not be used as interim storage. Create a folder for those needs. I created a "PreTrash" for files I wish to review before I delete them.

One further comment resetting the clock in OSX is always a very bad idea. If someone else can think of a way to change the "delete after one week" setting before you open the mail application I would go that route instead.

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CanadaRAM

· #3 · Aug 13, 2007

eMacMan said:
One further comment resetting the clock in OSX is always a very bad idea. If someone else can think of a way to change the "delete after one week" setting before you open the mail application I would go that route instead.

I think the OP has already passed the point of no return and the trashed files have already been deleted.

If you are on the 7th day and you dare not open your email program because it is set to delete as soon as you open it, then you could go into your User:Library:Mail and make a backup of the messages and the databases before you open the application. Same principle but different locations in MS Entourage and Eudora.

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