Move Mail to newer OS?

Hi,
Is it possible to move mail and mail settings from an older OS (10.3.9 on one computer) to a different OS (10.4.8? on a different computer)?
If so, does anyone have any pointers to articles that describe how to do this?
Thank you.
TPK

Hi Tim.
Yes, it’s possible. Mail stores most preferences and all account settings in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. Everything else, including all your messages and mailboxes, is stored in ~/Library/Mail/. You can copy these (the preferences file and the entire Mail folder itself, not just its contents) from the old system to the new one.
In order to avoid potential permission issues, copy the files operating on the destination computer and while logged in as the user that's going to use them. Also, be sure Mail isn't running on either computer while doing that.
The data format used by Mail to store the messages changed in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger), though, and Mail will tell you that your mail needs to be converted to the new format. Problem is, the conversion is broken, and it may succeed or it may fail miserably. Thus, you may want to take a look at the following article before proceeding (or you may try it anyway, and if it fails go back to the old computer, tidy up your mailboxes there as suggested by the article, and try again):
Overstuffed mailbox is unexpectedly empty
EDITED: If what you really want to do is merge the mail stored on one computer with whatever mail is already stored on the other, then the procedure would be different, and File > Import Mailboxes should be used instead.
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder, i.e. ~/Library is the Library folder within the user's home folder.

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