Recovering deleted and trashed mail

Recovering deleted and trashed mail - 6.0 & OSX

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art101 - 22 Dec 2003 22:08 GMT

Greetings:

If this is covered elsewhere, please excuse and point me to a related
thread.

A house-sitter unfamiliar with Eudora (or Mac) recently managed to
delete all messages in my In box while attempting to delete his
personal mail. Panicked, he quit Eudora. The In files were all emptied
from the Trash (as per my settings) so both the In and Trash mailboxes
are empty. I'm writing this on my PowerBook... the deleted mail is on
my other Mac. I have not used Eudora or checked mail on the other Mac
since this occurred and have not created any new files with other
applications. I also have not compacted the "In" box for a month or
so.

I'm assuming that even though the files were deleted, they probably
still exist somewhere on my drive and may be recoverable. However, I
don't know what type of files to look for.

I'm running Eudora 6.0 with Mac OSX 10.2.8 (Jaguar) on a G4. I have
Norton Utilities 8.0 and attempted to locate the deleted files with
its "unerase" function. Unfortunately, it seems only able to find what
it calls "generic" email files that are over a month old... and I'm
not sure how to add Eudora files to its filter/search function.
Searching by date doesn't help. Norton's help files are unhelpful. I
did find several files called "In" that display Eudora icons, but they
are also over a month old.

Any advice on possible recovery steps? In particular, do Eudora mail
files include a particular file extension? Or is there some other way
to identify them? If so, I can try a customized search with Norton by
extension name or other file attributes unique to Eudora. I'm hoping I
don't have to dig through all 60 gigs on the drive.

Sigh. I should back up more often. This is a painful lesson.

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Kathy Morgan - 23 Dec 2003 06:31 GMT

> A house-sitter unfamiliar with Eudora (or Mac) recently managed to
> delete all messages in my In box while attempting to delete his
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> applications. I also have not compacted the "In" box for a month or
> so.

Whew--Smart! Since you haven't run Eudora or compacted the mailboxes,
you're probably going to be okay.

Try opening a _copy_ of the In mailbox using a text editor such as
BBEdit or BBEdit Lite. Since you haven't compacted the mailbox, you'll
probably be able to see all of the mail when using the text editor. (The
mail box is just a text file, and when you delete an email, the message
is not actually deleted until you compact the mailbox. Actually, you'll
probably see a lot of old deleted mail you no longer want, but that's
better than losing mail.)

Now save the mailbox as a generic text file with Mac line endings. (If
you're using BBEdit Lite, use the Options button when saving.) Some
status info about individual messages may be lost, but you'll find most
is retained. I think when you restart Eudora, if you've saved the box
to the same mail folder, your new In box, with all its messages intact,
will show up. I just tested with one of my mailboxes and it just
worked.

> Sigh. I should back up more often. This is a painful lesson.

Indeed! Thanks for the reminder--it has been some long time since I've
backed up my mail files. :-)

Signature

Kathy - read reviews of other newsgroups in news:news.groups.reviews
help for new users of newsgroups at <http://www.aptalaska.net/~kmorgan/>
Good Net Keeping Seal of Approval at <http://www.gnksa.org/>

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art101 - 23 Dec 2003 17:59 GMT

> Try opening a _copy_ of the In mailbox using a text editor such as
> BBEdit or BBEdit Lite. Since you haven't compacted the mailbox, you'll
> probably be able to see all of the mail when using the text editor.

Thanks very much, Kathy. I know your tip works because I tested it on
my PowerBook... all mail is in a text file I opened with an editor
from a copy of my Inbox. Unfortunately, the same isn't the case when I
open a copy of the Inbox (or my other mailboxes) on the G4. They're
just empty; no text.

So, there's clearly something else going on. I wasn't at home when all
this happened and don't know what else the house-sitter might have
done (Lesson 2: Never let a house-sitter play with your Mac). He feels
horrible, BTW.

For what it's worth, I notice that 'get info' on that Inbox copy says
it's 216K... which is odd because it was closer to 1.5MB before this
event. The modification date is the same as the event. Just for kicks,
I also downloaded BBEdit Lite (nice program; hadn't played with it
previously) and tried opening the copy with it: same results. I'll
keep fooling around with this and post back if I have news. I'm also
waiting for a reply from Eudora tech support.

I have a ton of RAM on the G4... I wonder if all that mail was dumped
into RAM at the time and went poof when Eudora quit. I'm clueless
about how Eudora works with RAM.

> > Sigh. I should back up more often. This is a painful lesson.
>
> Indeed! Thanks for the reminder--it has been some long time since I've
> backed up my mail files. :-)

I remember a quote from a friend: "To go forward, you must back up."
Thanks again for your reply... I know it'll come in handy in future.

Reply to this Message

Jon Aalborg - 23 Dec 2003 22:39 GMT

>> Try opening a _copy_ of the In mailbox using a text editor such as
>> BBEdit or BBEdit Lite. Since you haven't compacted the mailbox, you'll
[quoted text clipped - 10 lines]
>done (Lesson 2: Never let a house-sitter play with your Mac). He feels
>horrible, BTW.

Good for you that he says that, but doesn't help, does it? :-(

Letting friends play with the Mac is no problem whatever if you create a
non-admin or even limited Guest account.

Seriously, then, but slightly OT: I have one admin account, then there are
accounts for wife, kids & my own user account - all non-admin, and then I
have a Limited Finder Guest account (with auto-login) with access to a
browser, Office and a couple of other things like QT Player. Works like a
charm, everyone happy & NO problems. This is on a Cube running Panther.

Eudora has no problem with this; it automatically creates separate user
data folders in each account's ~/Documents folder and uses the appropriate
one for each logged-in user.

With Panther's fast user switching, there isn't even the hassle of logging
out anymore. :-)

/J

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Kathy Morgan - 23 Dec 2003 23:33 GMT

> when I
> open a copy of the Inbox (or my other mailboxes) on the G4. They're
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> done (Lesson 2: Never let a house-sitter play with your Mac). He feels
> horrible, BTW.

My guess is that all mailboxes have been inadvertently compacted. It
would be very easy for a novice user to do that by accident and not even
realize that he had.

> For what it's worth, I notice that 'get info' on that Inbox copy says
> it's 216K... which is odd because it was closer to 1.5MB before this
> event. The modification date is the same as the event. Just for kicks,
> I also downloaded BBEdit Lite (nice program; hadn't played with it
> previously) and tried opening the copy with it: same results

Argh! If the files are down to that small, then the emails are gone.

There are a couple of slim hopes. One is that some portion of the
missing emails may still be in the Spool Folder, in an In.temp file.
Another straw to grasp at is that perhaps he accidentally moved or
deleted all the mail files. If the mail files are not where Eudora
expects to find them, it will create new empty In, Out, and Trash boxes.
Try searching your hard drive(s) for any files that contain "In." in the
name--maybe they accidentally got dragged to some strange location or
inadvertently put in the trash.

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art101 - 24 Dec 2003 07:29 GMT

Thanks, Kathy... no luck with the spoof folder or other tips... looks
like it's all gone into a digital black hole. Eudora tech support
thinks so too and suggested I try a data recovery service. I do have
backups of some stuff... live and learn. Hopefully, this thread will
prove useful to others.

Thanks, Jon... I'll take the time to set things up cleaner (should
have done it long ago). Glad to know Eudora requires no particular
noodling.

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Mac Forum / Applications / Eudora / December 2003

Recovering deleted and trashed mail - 6.0 & OSX