mail.app – Apple Mail messages disappeared after IMAP deletion + native transfer failure (no disk house) – emlx information nonetheless exist however seem empty

I’m attempting to recuperate my Apple Mail inbox on macOS Yosemite (Mail v8) after a sequence of occasions triggered all messages to vanish from the applying, although the uncooked information are nonetheless current on disk.

What occurred

1. The Inbox was unintentionally deleted on an iPhone, which eliminated the IMAP messages from the server.

2. On my MacBook (offline at that second), the emails have been nonetheless current regionally inside Apple Mail.

3. I attempted to maneuver the messages from the IMAP Inbox into an area “On My Mac” mailbox to avoid wasting them.

4. Throughout this transfer, the Mac ran out of disk house.

5. The transfer operation aborted, and afterwards the unique Inbox inside Apple Mail appeared utterly empty.

6. Nonetheless, on the filesystem, the uncooked (emlx and Attachments) mail information nonetheless exist.

The place the information are situated

The messages are saved in Apple Mail’s IMAP native cache at:

~/Library/Mail/V2//INBOX.mbox/

with a construction like:

INBOX.mbox/
 └── /
      └── Information/
           └── 0/
                └── 1/
                     ├── Messages/
                     └── Attachments/
                └── 2/
                └── 3/
                ... (many extra)

Inside these numerous Messages folders there are literally thousands of:

*.emlx

*.emlxpart

*.partial.emlx

What I’m seeing

• Every .emlx file has a standard file dimension (for instance a number of KB or extra).

• However after I open them immediately on macOS, they seem empty in Apple Mail and present no message textual content.

• If I manually rename an .emlx file to .eml and open it on Home windows or in one other mail program, the message content material is absolutely seen.

• So the file content material remains to be there, Apple Mail simply refuses to show it.

Present state

• I now have loads of free disk house once more.

• I nonetheless have the whole authentic INBOX.mbox folder.

• Apple Mail refuses to indicate or rebuild the messages.

• Rebuilding the Mail index (Envelope Index* information) didn’t assist.

• The information clearly exists within the .emlx, however Apple Mail doesn’t see it.

My query

How can I restore the mailbox in order that Apple Mail acknowledges and shows the messages once more?
I want to both:

1. rebuild the unique IMAP Inbox regionally in Apple Mail,

2. or recreate a legitimate native mailbox from the .emlx information,

3. or convert this construction into a correct .mbox file Apple Mail can import.

At this level I merely need a clear mailbox (native or mbox export) so I can later add the messages to the IMAP server once more.

Further notes

macOS: Yosemite

Mail.app model: 8

IMAP account

No Time Machine backup

Situation began after the disk ran out of house throughout a transfer from IMAP to native mailbox

The uncooked information nonetheless comprise the actual message knowledge (verified by renaming to .eml)