'On My Mac' email folder structure disappeared

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Level 1

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'On My Mac' email folder structure disappeared

I have (or rather had) a folder structure set up where I moved incoming emails to once I had dealt with them. I have a number of different email addresses (work as well as private, iCloud and others). Last night for some obscure reason, I was suddenly logged out of my appleID and there had to login to again and once this was done, the entire structure had disappeared. In addition all email accounts with exception of my iCloud account were missing (I have successfully recovered these).

The big problem is: Under 'On my Mac' in the right hand column of the Mail App, I just see the folders: 'Bin' and 'Import'. And in the 'Import' folder I can see all the emails that were previously inside the structured folders, but just as a long list (there are 26000 emails). Can anyone shed light on what has happened and preferably how I reverse this problem? OS is Ventura 13.1. I have Time Machine backups for the machine (MacBook Air 2022 (M2)) until a day ago.

MacBook Air, macOS 13.1

Posted on Jan 4, 2023 1:38 PM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

215,544 points

Jan 4, 2023 2:17 PM in response to Hans Thijsse

Click on the small arrow to the right of "On My Mac" and see if the missing mailboxes reappear:

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Answer 2

Jan 5, 2023 1:54 AM in response to Hans Thijsse

Before a clean install I zip archived ~/Library/Mail folder and then import it to the new Mail.app. That mail is inside "Local" folder in my setup but YMMV.

After that on the left-hand-side under "On My Mac" > Import, ..., I look for and move "Local" and all mailboxes inside it up under "On My Mac". Then I Right-click and delete "Import" folder (it has gmail mailboxes that are online). YMMV.

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Answer 3

Hans Thijsse Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 14, 2023 4:48 AM in response to Matti Haveri

OK, just to clarify: You took the ENTIRE ~/Library/Mail folder from the 'old' and working version before your clean install and imported it to the new cleanly installed version? In your opinion (and that of others) would that be the same as me taking the time machine backup from that very same folder (I can see it sitting there) and restoring it to my 'corrupted' system? That would be easy enough to do, but I just want to make as close to 100% as possible sure that I don't create new problems and go 'from the frying pan into the fire', so to speak.

Since the problem occurred I have not moved any new incoming emails into the 'On my Mac' environment, they are still all sitting in their respective IMAP accounts so I am not really worried about that!

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Answer 4

Jan 14, 2023 7:06 AM in response to Hans Thijsse

> You took the ENTIRE ~/Library/Mail folder from the 'old' and working version before your clean install and imported it to the new cleanly installed version? In your opinion (and that of others) would that be the same as me taking the time machine backup from that very same folder (I can see it sitting there) and restoring it to my 'corrupted' system?

I guess so although I have never really used Time Machine. But if something seems to fail, you can simply reset the mail to its default by trashing ~/Library/Mail folder.

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Answer 5

Hans Thijsse Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 29, 2023 1:29 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Well, I did exactly that: used Time Machine to restore the ~/Library/Mail folder to a date preceding the 'incident'. Unfortunately that made no difference at all, the 'Imported' folder with all 20000 or so emails still sits in 'On My Mac' without the subfolder structure I had set up. So it would appear that that folder structure does not reside in ~/Library/Mail, which is most surprising.

Anyone have a different idea?

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Answer 6

Hans Thijsse Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 4, 2023 11:15 PM in response to Old Toad

Sadly that's not it. When I click on that arrow, the only thing there are 'Bin' and 'Imports'. The mails that were in the 'structure' before now all sit in that 'Imports' folder.

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Answer 7

Hans Thijsse Author

Level 1

11 points

Jan 5, 2023 11:32 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Thank you for the response. I'm a bit snowed under at the moment but I'll get back Ito this later, probably early next week.

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'On My Mac' email folder structure disappeared

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