How to recover emails from a deleted account

Hello,

I don't exactly know how Mail works on Mac, but we can assume several things:

When deleting an account, check if the locally stored emails are deleted. Creating/deleting a test account can verify this.
If the files are not deleted, we can locate the file path containing the local emails in the account properties (before deletion).

The problem arises if you recreated a blank account with the same name as the original account. In that case, we can assume that the local email file has been overwritten.

The best approach would have been to locate the file containing the emails, rename/move it, create an account with the same name, and overwrite the file with the backup.

Cédric

Hello,

The logic of things:

Emails on the server:
The server retains emails only if the email software has been configured to do so. If in Mail, Thunderbird or others (you do not specify), you have set your account to delete emails from the server after retrieval, they are no longer on the server and thus lost in that respect.
But this approach seems rather surprising for a shared email account. In the case of a shared account, of course, we want everyone to receive the same mail, and therefore, the emails must remain on the server, even after being retrieved on any computer. Moreover, in this case, an IMAP account type is more appropriate than a POP account.

Emails on the Mac or PC.

If you haven’t deleted your mailboxes where you have organized your emails, you still have them even after deleting the account. This method is certainly more than recommended for professional emails.

If you have deleted an account without organizing your emails into folders (mistake), you may possibly find the emails if the folder containing them has not been deleted. Sometimes, it is enough to recreate the account exactly as it was, but not always. Sometimes you can find the folder in the deleted accounts as long as you haven’t instructed the email software to permanently delete the inbox/sent etc.

In this case, you can possibly retrieve these emails by going directly to their locations.

Example of searching for the Mail application:
Location:
Hard_Drive / Users / Username / Library / Mail
In detail:
By default in Mail, the base folders (inbox) are named Inbox, Sent, Deleted, Drafts, etc., and are located in folders named after your email address preceded by the term POP- (for example). The emails that you have manually sorted into folders will be found in a folder named Mailboxes

If you find in this location a folder POP-xxxxxxx@xxxxxx, or "xxxxxxx@xxxxxx" is your deleted email address, you will find inside your inboxes
Inbox, which is the inbox
Sent, which is the sent items
Deleted, which is the deleted messages inbox
Drafts, for drafts.

In the pages where I explain how to reinstall Mac OS 10.6 or 10.5, I explain where to find the emails from Mail, Thunderbird, or Entourage.
See if this can help you:
https://www.commentcamarche.net/faq/30592-installer-mac-os-x-10-6-alias-snow-leopard#mail

Otherwise, your only option left will be to use a recovery software like Data Rescue, for example, to retrieve deleted folders.

Have a good day
--
Always indicate your exact configuration: Model of Mac and version of Mac OS!
Francis Sanspseudo - Intel iMac Mac running OS 10.6 + iMac-G5 running Mac OS 10.5

If the client was set up to delete the files retrieved locally, I don't see how to recover them.

Other people more competent than me might have a solution. For me, there’s nothing left to do but request a backup from the admins/hosting provider.

Cédric