Recover deleted iCloud mail folder

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Recover deleted iCloud mail folder

I accidently deleted a folder (mailbox) in iCloud mail and in no time (obviously) the folder and all its content were removed from my two iPhones and iPad.

Is there any way of recovering the folder and its contents ? It does not show up in the bin or 'recently deleted items'.

[If not, hey Apple, this is badly designed! Yes, of course I could have been more careful, but sh.. happens. Anything deleted should end up in the bin prior to disappearing in the digital nirvanah!]

I switched off the Wifi and copied the mail folder on my Mac to local storage. However it seems to me this copy does not contain all mail (and attachments) for whatever reason. Any chance my TimeMachine backup may contain more ... I am travelling and have no access to it right now.

Thanks for any advice.

Posted on Sep 11, 2025 10:53 AM

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jurgen134 Author

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Sep 20, 2025 05:42 AM in response to jurgen134

So, I am back home now and found a work around recovering the mail from my TimeMachine backup on my Mac:

Here are the steps:

Goto to Library and locate the Mail folder (that's a hidden folder)
There are several sub-folders, on of them (for me V10) contains your mail boxes (at least two - one should be the one for "One my Mac", another the iCloud mail box)
Open the folder that contains the iCloud mail box; now 'Browse TimeMachine backups'. Move backwards in time until you find the deleted .mbox folder
Restore the .mbox folder from backup [I did not manage to make this visible in the mail application; I guess that this is due to the nature of iCloud and whatever you have locally only a "slave" copy of the online iCloud]
As it is useless where it is move the restored folder elsewhere
Create a new mailbox in the 'On my Mac' section in the mail app. Locate the folder in the library (see step 2)
Move the content of the .mbox folder into the new (empty) folder
Go to the mail app, select the new mailbox and choose the menu entry Mailbox > Rebuild. You should now be able to find the deleted messages (including sub folders) in there. Now the accidentally deleted folder lives "locally" on your Mac.
It may now be possible to move that folder from 'On my Mac' back to iCloud (but I am not sure this works for all messages)

It might be possible (again only in 'On my Mac' to use File > Import Mailbox (Apple format). I think that yields the same result.

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