[X4U] Sent messages disappeared, how do I get them back?

[Scott McCulloch]

On May 3, 2006, at 7:36 AM, Mark Des Cotes wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Mail 1.3.11 on OS 10.3.9
>
> I was cleaning out my "Sent" mailbox by deleting close to 3000  
> messages (leaving about 2000). When I quit Mail a message came up  
> that the Mailbox could not be compressed and would be returned to  
> it's previous state. When I launched Mail again the Sent mailbox  
> was empty. I checked under User/~/Mail/POP.../ and the Sent  
> Messages.mbox file is there and weighs in at 1.48 GB. How do I get  
> these messages back into Mail?
>

As I recall, there was an issue with Mail prior to Tiger wherein  
mailboxes became "unstable" at somewhere around 1GB. My wife lost all  
of her sent mail at about 900MB.

The two solutions I found on Apple's discussion boards were:

1. Upgrade to Tiger - Mail uses a different mailbox type, which is  
supposedly more stable and eliminates the problem

2. In pre-Tiger Mail, archive your mailboxes periodically to clean  
them out

I never did find a way to restore my wife's sent mail -- and in the  
process of trying to get it back (making a copy of the mbox, various  
fiddling around), I managed to reduce its size from over 900MB to  
about 80K (and I have no idea what actually did it). Needless to say,  
we upgraded her machine to Tiger, and she didn't talk to me for a day  
or so.

I hope you have better luck recovering what you've lost.

Scott