Bluehost Web Hosting Help

Accessing the Mail Folder in the Control Panel

All email boxes and messages are stored as files in folders on your account. There aren't a lot of reasons to access your mail folders directly, but it is possible.

Warning

Some email applications use the timestamp of the email files themselves to sort emails. Backing up or restoring email improperly can change the timestamps of those files making the dates and times of emails inaccurate. If the folder or its contents are moved improperly, or if the file ownership or permissions aren't correct, mail can stop working completely. For this reason, we do not recommend changing anything in your mail folders —enter at your own risk!

Alternatives

Depending on what you're trying to do, often times your goal can be accomplished without accessing the mail folder directly, which can be a lot better. Here are a few resources that explain the most common reasons for accessing the mail folder directly, without doing so.

Wondering what kind of mail directory structure we use? Bluehost uses the maildir format.
Considering an email application to access your mail? You can use any app or program that's IMAP or POP3 compatible.
Looking for an easy way to mass-delete emails? Check out How to Delete a Mass Amount in Email Account.
Just want to read, write, and reply to emails? Check out Email Application Setup.
Want to backup or restore emails? Check out Restoring Email Messages using the Site Backup Pro.

Access Your Mail Folders

Follow the steps below to access your mail files and folders through your control panel:

Log into your Bluehost control panel.
Scroll down to the Files section and click File Manager.
On the left side, navigate to the Home directory (one step up from public_html).
From the list of files to the right, open the Mail folder.
Find the folder named after the domain of the email account you're looking for and open it.
Inside, you'll find a folder for each email account user on the domain. Open the folder for the user of the email account. For example, if looking for the webmaster@example.com email account, you'd open the folder for example.com to find folders for the webmaster and the users for any other email accounts on that domain.
Here you'll find the new, cur, temp, .Trash, and .Sent folders for this particular email account. These are NOT folders for user-created email accounts; they're actually folders for the system email account that uses the cPanel username.