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Restore mail without Horcrux

Your Horcrux 5 backup includes the messages, mailbox records, and scripts needed to read your mail or restore it when the app is unavailable.

Find your backup folder

Open your Backup Location and look inside backups/ for the account folder ending in .horcrux. If the backup is on SFTP or Amazon S3, download the entire account folder first.

Keep source/, versions/, and the supplied restore scripts together. The scripts use the records in versions/ to put each message back in its mailbox.

Open a single message

Inside source/, open a saved .eml file in Apple Mail or another compatible mail app. The file includes the message and its attachments. You can stop here if you only need to read it.

Check a mailbox offline

The backup includes a Python script (fallback.py) and a Ruby version (fallback.rb). To use the Python script, you’ll need Python 3.10 or later.

  1. Open Terminal in the account folder containing fallback.py.
  2. Run python3 fallback.py --dry-run and choose the backup you want to restore.
  3. Review the count of available message files and any missing records. This check runs offline. To see the available options, run python3 fallback.py --help.

Restore mailboxes to an IMAP account

The script appends messages to the corresponding mailboxes on the destination account. Running the restore twice can create duplicates.

  1. From the same account folder, run python3 fallback.py.
  2. Select the backup you checked in the dry run.
  3. Enter the destination IMAP server, username, and password when prompted. After the restore, open that account in your mail app to review the mailboxes.