A rogue program trashed my GMX IMAP inbox on the server as well as in eM Client but nothing else. I have an eM Client backup which is 4 days old but I will lose everything more recent for another 10 accounts if I use that. At the same time I have a daily image of the whole eM Client database from immediately before the GMX inbox was lost. In addition, I have
I have tried copying the copy of the GMX database folder to the appropriate eM Client folder but the IMAP server insists on deleting the trashed files as it knows nothing about them. Hence, I need to override the automatic updating that is carried as soon as eM Client connects to the GMX IMAP server. Presumably the way to achieve what I want is to import the copy of the inbox messages but I can’t work out how to get the messages out of the database copy in a form that can be imported.
There is another option that occurs to me. Start eM Client and put it into offline mode. Close it and copy the database files to the standard directory. Re-open eM Client. The crucial issue is whether the Offline status persists when the program is re-opened. If so, I may be able to export or copy the messages to a file or folder that can be re-imported when the program is put Online again. Will this work?
Can anyone suggest any other way in which I can restore the IMAP inbox using an image of the eM Client database from 24 hours earlier? I understand that nothing can be done about stuff received in the intervening 24 hours.
There is a way to retrieve selected data from the backup:
Disconnect the computer from the Internet. This is important!
Go to Menu > Settings > General > Backup. Disable Periodic Backup if it is selected and click on OK.
Make a backup using Menu > Backup, so we can come back to the current database later.
Restore the old backup that has the data you want to retrieve.
Export that data you need. You can do that using Menu > File > Export > Export email to eml files. You can select whole directory trees, so it is fairly easy to do.
Restore the backup made in step 3.
Reconnect to the Internet.
Import the data from step 5 using Menu > File > Import > Email (eml).
Thank you. It is useful to know how to restore a single account/folder from a backup.
However, a variant of the method described in my query worked for me. To summarise it:
Set eM Client to work offline - and disconnect the computer from the internet for extra safety.
After closing eM Client copy the folder to be restored from your image backup to the original location, overwriting the existing files.
Open eM Client and copy the folder to a backup folder in Local Folders.
Reconnect to the internet and allow the IMAP server to sync with eM Client.
Copy the files from the backup folder to the location that you want to restore.
Exporting and then re-importing emails from the backup folder didn’t work reliably for me.
There is one critical qualification: whether via a backup or my copying method, the recovery will only work if you have downloaded the messages and attachments from the IMAP server. You need to set the option in the IMAP set of options to download both messages and attachments. If you don’t do that everything will be stored on the server and will be lost if the emails are deleted.
I suspect that some of my attachments may have been lost but I use a separate email program as a reserve to download and store attachments separately from mail messages in a manner similar to POP messages. Relying on IMAP is very convenient when moving between locations and/or computers but it is all too easy to delete things permanently by mistake. That is why I have so many levels of backup. Working with a single backup file in the manner of eM Client is very clumsy, though the lesson is to execute the backup program daily and to keep multiple copies. Don’t trust one method of backup on its own!
That is fine except if there was new local data in the database since the backup was made. Then that data and any settings and preferences you have changed will be lost.
I think that you may have partially misunderstood the intention. I was only trying to restore emails, etc in a single folder. No changes were made to other folders, so generals settings & preferences could not be affected. However, this is a rollback to the date of the last copy and emails from between the copy date and the date of restoration not on the server were lost. That was unavoidable.