So, you just deleted your account in Apple’s fine Mail program and you happened to ignore the warning that explained how all messages associated with this account would be deleted (doh!). Or, maybe (like me) you didn’t realize that removing the account would delete all the Sent Messages for that account. That sucks.

Here’s how to get those messages back (note, this worked for me on Tiger OSX 10.4):

1) Don’t panic.

2) Download a trial copy of Data Rescue II. You’ll need an external hard drive with some free space, so go grab one while you’re downloading.

3) Plug-in that external drive. Open the disk image and launch Data Rescue II. Follow the instructions for performing a “Deleted Files scan”. When the scan is complete you’ll see a Mail folder that contains all your email messages. Recover it. If there is more than one mail folder, recover them all. You may need to register the program at this point as the unregistered version will only recover 5mb of data. Don’t worry, it will be the best $99 you ever spend.

4) Now you should have all the recovered Mail files in a series of folders on your external drive. Each folder holds 1,000 messages. Each message is a separate .emlx file.

5) To get those emails back into Mail you’ll need to convert them to a single mbox file. Download a copy of emlxconvert, open the disk image file and launch the program. I converted my .emlx files in batches of 1,000.

6) Now switch over to Mail and select “Import Mailboxes…” from the File menu. Choose to import data from “Other” and hit continue, and select the folder that contains your new mbox file. Mail will create a new mailbox folder called “Import”, and the messages will begin to appear in this mailbox as they are imported. It took me about 5 minutes to import 1,000 messages on my MacBook Pro (2 GHz Intel, 2 GB RAM).

7) Whew! You have now imported all the messages that were either sent or received by the account you deleted. You’ll need to repeat the import process for each mbox file you created in Step 5.

Leave us a comment if this technique helped you out!

I ran across two annoying problems when setting up a new Trac project on our xserve today. Thought I’d share my solutions in hopes of helping someone. Our xserve runs OS X Server 10.4.11, and we’re using Trac version 0.11b2.

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Just saw a great documentary that I thought I’d review (in an attempt to win Tyler’s “blog today!” contest). It’s called “My Kid Could Paint That“, and it’s about a 4-year old girl named Marla from Binghamton, New York who has an amazing ability to create beautifully mature abstract paintings. A quick summary from NetFlix (my main source for DVDs):

Amir Bar-Lev directs this thought-provoking documentary about a precocious 4-year-old artist whose abstract works have drawn critical comparisons with modernist greats such as Kandinsky, Picasso and Pollack — and whose talents have already profited her more than $300,000. Is her gift with a paintbrush just an illusion, or is she truly an artistic visionary trapped in the body of a child?

Inspiration or manipulation??? I won’t reveal to you what happens because Amir does a wonderful job of telling the story as it unfolded… but let’s just say it’s not so pretty at the end. Amir gives a balanced take on the events and leaves you as the viewer to decide what really happened. And it’s the kind of movie that you just have to talk about immediately after watching it. Admittedly, I was also really intrigued because of the local proximity of the story.

So add this right to the top of your Queue, this is a must-see documentary!

REALTORS….

Get agency-wide property listings on your website with our IDX integration special! Click the link directly below to read about the details and pricing or download as a PDF file.

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MAMP is an awesome program that allows you to install Apache, MySQL and PHP with just a few clicks on Mac OS X. It’s a really easy way to set up a local development environment, or to get a dynamic website running a laptop (which is something we recently had to do for a client).

Apparently there’s a bug in the current version (1.7.1) that causes MAMP to stop working even though the MAMP window reports Apache and MySQL running with a green light. When you try to load up pages in a browser you’ll get an unable to connect message like “Firefox can’t establish a connection to the server at localhost:8888“. Stopping and starting the Apache and MySQL services doesn’t fix the problem and even restarting your Mac doesn’t help! You may not even be able to get MAMP to stop running. Here’s how to fix the bug…

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