A (tedious) solution to my e-mail disaster…
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- January
- 3
Yesterday, I told the story of how, through a computer glitch, I lost several years worth of e-mail that includes notes telling the story of Pumpkin’s life in all its little details and big milestone moments. This was pretty upsetting, as you can imagine. Well, I found a solution that has me somewhat relieved, but a little daunted.
I knew there was a chance the files were saved somewhere on my computer, since I don’t have the option of leaving e-mail permanently on the Internet service provider’s server. The problem is that Mac Mail saves the e-mail in a format that’s designed for the program to retrieve, but not for the user to find by searching through the library. But I was determined, particularly after neither Optimum Online nor Apple tech support could find a way to restore the messages. I found a folder embedded deep in my computer that contained about 8,700 files, all named with “elmx” and a number. I opened one, and it was a sent e-mail message. I was so happy  here were the missing messages! But I was also intimidated by the task. There is no way to do a text search on the files and their file names give no hint as to their contents. The dates on the files also do not correspond to the dates inside the e-mails.
So, yes, I have to open up all 8,700 files individually, scan their contents and save the ones that relate to Pumpkin as text files. It’s a big job, but at least I have a solution. It will be worth the effort, I know, based on a few of the e-mail messages I’ve read so far that put a date on how many ounces of milk she was drinking and when she smiled her first smile. Good luck to me! I also hope that all the messages are saved because there are some odd leaps in time between them.
I am sharing this tale because I am hoping it will be a lesson to all of us. We parents sometimes need a reminder to backup our precious memories stored on our computers. Do you still have holiday photos on your hard drive that haven’t been saved anywhere else? Get them backed up! And think about unconventional sources of memories, like e-mail. Those e-mails or instant message logs from your son or daughter spending a first year at college, for instance, would be a treasure if you saved them to read again in 10 years. Do the rest of you have any backup tips to share? Or any tales of lost (or found) data?
This entry was posted
on Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 at 9:08 am by Julie Moran Alterio.
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