I periodically copy my whole home folder (= My Mailbox) to a back-up drive. (I had originally installed with the ROAM option, so the Home folder was not within the PM folder.) I wanted to find a message I had accidently erased, so I added the back-up folder as a new mailbox. It displayed my 'new mail' but it did not display any of the folders within the original home folder. How do I get access to those folders?

There is too little information provided for me to understand what you are doing so let me explain how it would work in a default installation and maybe that will help you figure things out.

In a default installation, C:\PMAIL contains all of the Pegasus Mail files. C:\PMAIL\Programs contains the program files and C:\PMAIL\MAIL contains the mailbox directory(ies) but can be a mailbox directory itself in a single user installation. So, let's say you have an installation with the default user of Admin. That mailbox directory is C:\PMAIL\MAIL\Admin.

You then decide to backup that mailbox, so you would backup the \Admin directory. Let's say you back it up to D:\mailbackup. If you backed it up at the directory level, your backup will have D:\mailbackup\Admin.

It is the directory path of D:\mailbackup\Admin that you would attach as an added mailbox.

Something to check is the directory that you attach should contain FOL?????.PMM and FOL?????.PMI files. These are Pegasus Mail folder files. If they don't exist then something is wrong with the backup or your are looking at the wrong directory. The PMM and PMI files can not be in a subdirectory of the attached directory.

I hope that helps.

Thanks. You are confirming what I expected, and it corresponds to what I did. The PMM and PMI files are there, where you say they should be. But when I attach it, there are no folders other than the New Mail folder in the Folder list. (This is no longer urgent, but it implicates my back-up system, which assumes that the folders are retrievable.)

The problem is likely that you have a major conflict since if you copied the folders from the mail directory all of you folders would have the same uniq ids for the folders and that would cause issues with the duplicates.

Generally when folders are created they are given a random uniq name, but if one copies a folder pair PMM/PMI files to a different name or to a different folder the Uniq ID would be the same.

The folder key at beginning of the PMM file would need to be changed. Can be done with a hexeditor, but one needs to know what is being done, and the HIERARCH.PM file would also need to be modified? Don't use multiple mailboxes, so not 100% sure on that part.

I've used a program to rename my folders. Keep the first 2 parts the same as original Pegasus, but change the third part and rename folders. Long ago, the DOS version of PMAIL would let one rename folders.

A few lines from my file.
0,0,"3OOSMBJP:2E68:G4L2122","4DB14767:G4LTRAY","G4L2122"
0,0,"URAJ5V4B:59AE:G4L2324","4DB14767:G4LTRAY","G4l2324"
0,0,"LW7GN12F:31AE:G4U","024B349:My mailbox","G4U"
0,0,"1B807959:5B63:GFT","024B349:My mailbox","GFT"
0,0,"4060FD28:667D:GRC","024B349:My mailbox","GRC"
0,0,"O2WCFHFD:10C2:GRUB","024B349:My mailbox","Grub"
0,0,"BF64HBCK:35D9:HARLEY","024B349:My mailbox","Harley"
0,0,"2BA4FCC7:6668:HERC-XEN","024B349:My mailbox","Herc-Xena"
0,0,"15B7FCBB:6666:IBM","024B349:My mailbox","IBM"

Very helpful. I had assumed that since they were in different mailboxes the duplicates wouldn't matter. But this suggests that if I had a second installation of Pegasus--for example, on a flash drive--and substituted the back-up for its Home folder, it would open without difficulty. (Keeping it offline, of course, to prevent it from actually interfering with my normal installation).

Good catch @msetzerii. This is exactly right. I apologize for not addressing it in my response. There is program called PMRestArch (PM Restore Archived) that was created specifically for the purpose of accessing archived email folders. It was created by Stuart McLachlan of Lexacorp to make a copy of archived email folders, renaming them and assigning a different internal ID. Unfortunately the Lexacorp download source no longer exists. It was distributed without any documentation or copyright information, and its executable properties do not show any details. All of this has me reticent to make it available publicly. I will give some thought to creating some usage notes and then posting here in the Add-Ons category.

Yes, this can work. Best on a flash drive. Add the -ROAM and the -O (oh, not zero) options to the command line. The -O option will start it in offline mode.

I found his download page in the Internet Archive, but unfortunately the downloads are not archived along with his former page. I started my search at https://sobac.com/pegasus/ which even contains more Pegasus Mail related links (not tested).

00000000   4D 61 69 6E  20 46 6F 6C  64 65 72 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  Main Folder.................
0000001C   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  ............................
00000038   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  ............................
00000054   00 00 30 4A  4F 4A 48 42  33 32 3A 33  41 33 41 3A  4D 41 49 4E  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  ..0JOJHB32:3A3A:MAIN........
00000070   00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  00 00 00 00  46 72 6F 6D  3A 20 50 65  67 61 73 75  ................From: Pegasu

Example first part of Main.PMM file using a hex editor. It has name at beginning, and then nulls and then the Uniq Folder ID

Notice some folders have a few other bytes that are not nulls??
00000038 00 00 01 00 02 22
Have no ideal what the 01 or 02 22 bytes do? Probable only Mr. Harris would.
Have reset them to NULLs, and not had issues. Could have some info?

So, one could modify that with a hex editor, and same. Would then need to make same change in HIERARCH.PM file, or delete line, and let it recreate.

In my program that changes names of folders I use this function to update the 128 bytes.

void cleanpmm(char filename[],char c[])
{
    FILE *fp1;
    if((fp1=fopen(filename,"rb+")))
    {
        int i;
        char ch[128];
        for(i=0;i<49;i++)
            ch[i]=fgetc(fp1);
        for(i=49;i<128;i++)
            ch[i]=0;
        for(i=86;i<(int)(86+strlen(c)-2);i++)
            ch[i]=c[i-86+1];
        fseek(fp1,0,0);
        for(i=0;i<128;i++)
            fputc(ch[i],fp1);
        fclose(fp1);
    }
}
So it doesn't effect rest of file.

00000000 41 4D 41 5A 4F 4E 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 AMAZON......................
0000001C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ............................
00000038 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ............................
00000054 00 00 33 42 46 38 46 42 44 30 3A 36 36 33 42 3A 41 4D 41 5A 4F 4E 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..3BF8FBD0:663B:AMAZON......
00000070 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 52 65 74 75 72 6E 2D 50 61 74 68 3A ................Return-Path:

`

That is an interesting list in regards to how many I am unaware of. Of the 12 HTTP links on that page, deadlinkchecker.com reports 8 of them failed. Two of them are known good pmail.com sites so that left two. I checked both and found only this one actually works.

Stephen Knight's Pegasus Mail Add On Programs: http://www.dragon-it.co.uk/pegasus.htm

Also, Han v.d. Bogaerde's Pegasus Mail information site is now at: https://www.vandenbogaerde.net/han_lkfr.htm

Immediately coming to mind but not listed are these sources that I valued:
Martin Ireland (now gone)
Bob Kellock (now gone)
I'm sure there are others that will bubble up from the depths of my memory with time.

This is sad. We have lost a treasure trove of utilities.

That's why I included it .

You can search the Wayback Machine for opening these as well, I did it with the URL to Peter Seitz's German Pegasus Mail page, e.g., which provides even more links including a couple of more language specific ones available in the past.

I can confirm that my attempt to add the archive folder as a new mailbox corrupted the Hierarch.PM file. It lost all trays, though the folders were still there (and it was mysteriously shorter as well). I replaced it with the day-old version in my (almost) daily update to Dropbox, and there seem to be no further problems. Thanks again, to all.

Did you close Pegasus Mail while the archive folder was attached? If so, on subsequent startup did you receive the mailbox locked warning? If yes, what version of Pegasus Mail are you running?

I ask because I tested attaching an archive folder and experienced an abend during shutdown. My HIERARCH did not end up corrupted but that is certainly a potential result of an abend at shutdown. This abend is reproducible and has been reported. I'm running v4.91.

As best I recall (and I may be wrong), no. Once I saw that I couldn't find what I was looking for, I just detached it. I did this with too different archives, I think in the same session. The folder window itself was corrupted a that point--all the text was replaced with ! or ?--but just closing and opening closing that window fixed it.

Thanks for that response.

BTW, I posted PM Restore Archive (PMRestArch) in the Add-ons for Pegasus Mail category of this site.