[Users] Recover mail from a backup --- possible?

[Rolf Turner]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2022 08:28:55 +0800
Bret Busby <bret at busby.net> wrote:

> On 21/4/22 8:20 am, Rolf Turner wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Just now I (stupidly/clumsily) *deleted* an email from my inbox.
> > I'm not even sure what it was, but I'd like to recover it, just in
> > case it was something important.  I'm pretty sure it was not a
> > recent email; i.e. it had been sitting around for some weeks,
> > waiting for me to deal with it.
> > 
> > I have a *fairly* recent backup of my user files on an external
> > drive. I believe that the backup is more recent than the email that
> > I am trying to recover.  I can mount the external drive and look at
> > /home/rolf/.claws-mail in that backup. But then I get stuck.
> > 
> > How do I actually get at the emails (copies of which I presume are
> > there *somewhere*)?  I have attached ("listing.txt") the results of
> > executing "ls" in /home/rolf/.claws-mail in the backup.
> > 
> > I have looked in "imap.cache" (the mail account in question is an
> > IMAP account), but everything there seems "old" (most recent date
> > is 3 January 2021 (!!!) whereas many files in the
> > /home/rolf/.claws-mail directory date from 8 April 2022.  (I did
> > the backup on 9 April 2022.)
> > 
> > So where do I go to look for emails that arrived in the weeks just
> > prior to 9 April 2022?  Or am I asking the impossible?
> > 
> > If there is any further information that I could/should provide,
> > please tell me.  If you offer instructions, may I beseech you to
> > couch them in simple language?  I have some computer skills, but
> > there are yawning lacunae in my knowledge.
> > 
> > Thanks for any advice.

> 
> How did you delete it?
> 
> Unless you used <SHIFT><DELETE>, it should simply have been
> transferred to the Deleted bin - see the pane at the left, that
> displays a list of the folders.
> 
> Click on the Deleted bin, and find whether it is in that folder.

No.  Sigh.  I *deleted* the damned thing, rather than moving it to the
"wastebin".  I.e. I clicked on "Delete" which lies immediately below the
"Move to wastebin" button in the dropdown menu that I get when I
right-click on a message.

cheers,

Rolf

-- 
Honorary Research Fellow
Department of Statistics
University of Auckland
Phone: +64-9-373-7599 ext. 88276