Lost mailboxes

[Randy]

Hello, I am a new member as of 5 minutes ago. I am also 75 yrs. old and computer illiterate - - please groan now . . . .
OK, since this is my first post I will ask two questions.

1) For 10 years we owned a weekly vacation rental. My email addresses are loaded with addresses I will never use again. Is there a way to delete selected addresses from the drop down list for each alphabet letter ?

2) The most important question. About a month ago all - approx. 30 - mailboxes disappeared from the left side of the screen. They were there when I turned the machine off and were not there the next day. I rebooted to no avail. They are full of several years of stored info and very valuable. At the time I accidentally hovered the curser over either 'smart mailboxes' - 'on my Mac' or 'I-cloud' and a dark circle with a positive sign within it appeared along with the word 'show' or 'hide.' I clicked one of these and all my mailboxes reappeared. Well, the mailboxes have again disappeared and none of my clickings on any of the 'show - hide' circles is bringing them back. So, what is step 2 ??

I have High Sierra 10.13.4 with Mail 11.3 and Time Machine backup that operates automatically every 24 hrs.

Thank you for your response,
Randy

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

1) I assume you mean there are email addresses in the Contacts app that you want to remove? You can simply click on an email address once to select it, then press the Delete key on the keyboard, and click the Delete button. That should remove them.

2) First, we should determine where the mailboxes were located - on your Mac or iCloud.

-Who is the email provider - Apple, Gmail, Verizon, Hotmail, etc.?
-If the email provider has webmail access, login via Safari or Chrome and see if the mailboxes are there.

We'll see if we can solve it without having to restore from Time Machine.

C

 

[JonLily]

Honestone recommends a tool for the task here:
https://www.mac-help.com/threads/backup-apple-mail-to-my-system.224934/
make sure you have this against any issue in the future.

 

[Randy]

Gentlemen, thank you for the replies.
In the last month we have spent 7 hrs. at the Genius bar. FINALLY, my computer is back to normal with all information restored.
The worst thing I learned was that Time Machine does not back-up a lot of information. I had thought it backed up everything. I am now backing up on thumb drives, not sure why I even still have Time Machine
Thanks again,
Randy