First thing first, let me warn you that if you’ve accidentally deleted your emails in The Bat! and want to recover them, it is still possible but make sure that you “DO NOT CLOSE THE BAT! AND KEEP IT OPEN. ONCE YOU EXIT THE PROGRAM, IT WILL COMPRESS YOUR EMAILS AND IT IS NO LONGER POSSIBLE TO RECOVER YOUR EMAIL!”
Does anyone of you ever uses the recycle bin? When you delete a file, it goes to your recycle bin, giving you a second chance to restore the delete files. As for me, I’ve got a very bad habit that is always using the Shift+Delete command to delete unwanted files. Shift+Del key deletes the file without putting it to the recycle bin. So if I need to get back the file, I’d have to use a data recovery software. It happened a few times and luckily I managed to get back 90% of the delete files.
I am using The Bat! email client to download all my emails. I didn’t like Microsoft Outlook or Windows Live Mail because they are prone to exploits and viruses. Maybe its just that I’ve gotten so used to it and didn’t want to waste any more time in learning how to use another email client. Two days ago I accidentally deleted all my emails in Inbox. I panicked because I know that recovering deleted emails is not the same as recovering deleted files and I didn’t have any experience in recovering deleted emails from The Bat!.
Luckily I managed to recover and restore approximately 90% of the deleted emails, and I am more than satisfied. If you’re an unlucky person that shares the same fate as me, then here’s how to recover your delete emails.
The Bat! has a built-in feature where it allows you to browse deleted messages for a folder (such as your inbox, outbook, sent mail and trash). Just select the folder and press Ctrl+B. Alternatively, you can also do that by clicking the Folder menubar and select Browse Deleted Messages.
You can view the deleted email, but you won’t be able to use the command Copy to Folder or Move to Folder. I can save the email message into TXT or EML format but what if I have more than a thousand emails in my inbox which I accidentally deleted? I am going to suggest you a tool that can automatically extract all deleted emails, save them to .MSG extension which you can reimport them back to your The Bat email client. Sounds good? Just follow the steps below.
1. Download The Bat! Message Recovery.
2. Extract the downloaded rar file and run TBMRec.exe
3. If Mailbox Name dropdown appears empty, that means the Path to Mailboxes is not right. Somehow this program is not able to read the path variable properly. Now open My Computer and paste %APPDATA%\The Bat!\ at the address bar and hit enter. It should automatically change to something like “C:\Documents and Settings\YOURUSERNAME\Application Data\The Bat!” in Windows XP. For Vista, it might be a little different. Copy the NEW address and paste it to The Bat! Message Recovery Path to Mailboxes.
4. Click the drop down box for Mailbox Name again and all your email accounts configured in The Bat! should appear. Select the account that you want to recover.
5. Next thing to check is the “Folder in Mailbox”. If you want to recover the deleted email from Trash, then select Trash. If Inbox folder, then select Inbox.
6. Click the small button to set the location for the messages to extract to.
7. Make sure Algorithmic is selected and click the Run button. Should take only a few seconds to complete.
8. Go to The Bat! email client, select the Folder that you want to restore the email messages to, click Tools from menubar, select Import Messages and click on From .MSG/.EML-files… Browse the location where you set the “Extract messages to” in The Bat! Message Recovery program.
9. You can now select all of the messages and click Open. The Bat! will automatically import all the emails that you deleted.
It definitely works because it did on my side. However, there are 2 small problems. I noticed that the latest past 2 months emails are not imported. I am not sure if it is the recovery program’s bug or I have too many emails. The recovery program did mention that it works on databases of The Bat! v1.44 and earlier versions. I am now using The Bat! v4.1.11, so there could be some incompatibilities that caused this problem. Another issue is all of the imported emails will appear as unread. You can select all of the emails and mark it as read. It’s not perfect but at least I managed to get back 90% of my emails. Hope this helps!
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