On 2025-05-31, Peter James <[email protected]> wrote:

I decided to install a software program on my Mac laptop, called SpamSieve. In
the process of installing the software it deleted every article of male saved in my mailboxes going back quite some years. After I got over the horror of this event I searched the hard disk carefully and examined the folders marked "bin" in every account. I have four mail accounts on the hard disk and one "mail"box in the "in box" making five. I found all the deleted mail articles in the various "bin" boxes.

So now I am faced with the task of transferring each and everyone from five "bin" boxes to their various homes. Can anyone tell me if there is an easy way
of doing this? Or do I have to individually transfer each and every article? If so, this is going to keep me busy for many hours.

Assuming you use Apple Mail ...

If you've got some Time Machine backups (or other such as CCC), you could try restoring the Mail folder residing in your home folder's Library folder from before you had the problem or installed SpamSieve, i.e.

~/Library/Mail

--
Cheers, Alan

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On 31/05/2025 09:45, Peter James wrote:

I decided to install a software program on my Mac laptop, called SpamSieve. In
the process of installing the software it deleted every article of male saved in my mailboxes going back quite some years. After I got over the horror of this event I searched the hard disk carefully and examined the folders marked "bin" in every account. I have four mail accounts on the hard disk and one "mail"box in the "in box" making five. I found all the deleted mail articles in the various "bin" boxes.

So now I am faced with the task of transferring each and everyone from five "bin" boxes to their various homes. Can anyone tell me if there is an easy way
of doing this? Or do I have to individually transfer each and every article? If so, this is going to keep me busy for many hours.

If you're thinking of installing SpamSieve take warning.

Pete.

A perfect example of how Time Machine can help you!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSwy_thSXow

Simply restore your MacBook to how it was BEFORE you installed SpamSieve!

Btw, that's also a warning - do not install software which is not
available in the Apple App Store!

--
David

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On 2025-05-31, Alan B <[email protected]d> wrote:

On 2025-05-31, Peter James <[email protected]> wrote:

I decided to install a software program on my Mac laptop, called SpamSieve. In
the process of installing the software it deleted every article of male saved
in my mailboxes going back quite some years. After I got over the horror of >> this event I searched the hard disk carefully and examined the folders marked
"bin" in every account. I have four mail accounts on the hard disk and one >> "mail"box in the "in box" making five. I found all the deleted mail articles >> in the various "bin" boxes.

So now I am faced with the task of transferring each and everyone from five >> "bin" boxes to their various homes. Can anyone tell me if there is an easy way
of doing this? Or do I have to individually transfer each and every article? >> If so, this is going to keep me busy for many hours.

Assuming you use Apple Mail ...

If you've got some Time Machine backups (or other such as CCC), you could try restoring the Mail folder residing in your home folder's Library folder from before you had the problem or installed SpamSieve, i.e.

~/Library/Mail

However that probably will do no good if you use IMAP and the messages are stored in mailboxes on your email provider's servers. If you have stored old messages in locally created mailboxes then there is hope.

--
Cheers, Alan

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Peter James <[email protected]> wrote:

I decided to install a software program on my Mac laptop, called SpamSieve. In
the process of installing the software it deleted every article of male saved in my mailboxes going back quite some years. After I got over the horror of this event I searched the hard disk carefully and examined the folders marked "bin" in every account. I have four mail accounts on the hard disk and one "mail"box in the "in box" making five. I found all the deleted mail articles in the various "bin" boxes.

So now I am faced with the task of transferring each and everyone from five "bin" boxes to their various homes. Can anyone tell me if there is an easy way
of doing this? Or do I have to individually transfer each and every article? If so, this is going to keep me busy for many hours.

First of all, take a copy of all of them in case it decides to clear out its 'bin' at some point.

How are the articles arranged? Is it one file per article? Do they have
any headers or anything that SpamSieve added to them? Or just raw text emails? How are the files named?

Does each message start with the text "From " (ie no colon in the first 5 characters of the file)? Does each message end with a blank line?

If it's one file per article and they each start and end as above, you may
be able to just concatenate them into .mbox files. In Terminal something
like (assuming all the messages are called similar to 'something38482.msg', you'd have to adjust the extension as appropriate):

$ cd /Users/example/whatever/bin
$ cat *.msg > deleted.mbox

and then import the file 'deleted.mbox' into Mail.

Theo

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