Exported Mailboxes are empty

Hi, I exported mailboxes before erasing my hard drive and now I try to import them back in my new system I realise that the mailboxes are actually empty! Why did this happen and how can I recover them?

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Exported files are empty

I exported my created webpage File > Export > CSS & Images (.htm). Files are created but .htm , .css files are empty and there is not images in /images folder?
Is this bug in FireWorks?

Download and use Find Any File to search for the file name and extension of the video. FAF can search areas that Spotlight can't like invisible folders and packages.
You may find several items with the same name so check their size. Note where the larger file resides.
OT

Mailboxes are empty after upgrade to 10.5.6

I just upgraded from Tiger 10.4.11 to Leopard 10.5.6, and after the installation the Mac has rebooted into the new OS. That was just a few minutes ago, and looking things over, all appears to be as before, and the applications launch and work, except for Mail.
In Mail, all my mailboxes are there, but there is nothing in them. Furthermore, I sent myself a test message, and Mail does not bring it in. Nor is the sent message shown in the Sent mailbox.
Can anyone tell me what is going on here? Where are all the stored messages that are supposed to be in my mailboxes, and why am I no longer able to send or receive messages?
Any help most appreciated.
Tom

I've encountered this problem on the last three upgrades from Tiger (10.4.11) to Leopard (10.5.6). I've done three different upgrade paths (simple upgrade, clean install, erase/install and migrate) and in all three cases, the Mail problem is exactly the same. When Mail launches, it says the Mail files need to be updated (or something similar), I say OK, and after a few minutes it reports that Mail is ready to use, I say OK and mail opens to a few generic mailboxes with nothing in them. All the mail seems to be gone. Mail hangs and I have to force quit. I can't send or receive mail.
Here is what I have learned and what I recommend. If you are reading this after you've encountered the problem, described skip to step 3. If you haven't yet done the upgrade start at the beginning.
By way of preview for the steps below; basically, you will document your current settings, then create a new, empty mail system. Then you will import your mail and reconstruct your mailbox structure. The steps below will guide you through this process.
1. Before you upgrade, document all of your email settings for login and password, server settings for sending and receiving mail. Also document the arrangement of all of your mailboxes. I recommend making screenshots (cmd-shift-4 followed by spacebar then mouse-click to capture an image of the window). Do this for all relevant views of your mailboxes, so you can see what you want your mailbox structure to look like after you are done. The pictures will probably land on your desktop and be named Picture 1, Picture 2 etc.
2. Upgrade your OS normally, do all of your software updates etc, but DON'T LAUNCH MAIL YET!
3. If Mail is running, make it stop. Trash the file; /Users/(yourusername here)/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
4. Move the folder; /Users/(yourusername here)/Library/Mail to the desktop. This is where all of your email is. DO NOT TRASH THIS FOLDER!
5. Take the computer off the network. You don't want it to check your mail just yet. Either turn off your Airport, or disconnect your Ethernet cable, or both.
6. Launch Mail. It will ask you to configure it for the first time. Since it is not on the network, you will need to configure it manually, using the settings you documented in step 1. Don't let it configure itself, because it is not on the network and will not be able to find any servers.
7. After mail is configured, you can bring the machine back onto the network and confirm that your mail settings work. Undo whatever you did in Step 5.
8. Import your old mail into the new mail settings by choosing File>Import Mailboxes. Point the import step to the Mail folder on your desktop that you moved in step 4. NOTE: If you open the Activity Viewer under the Window menu > Activity, it will let you watch the subsequent processes, which can take a long time under some circumstances. Especially if you have a lot of mail, or if you are on a slow computer.
9. After the mail is imported, it will be in a folder called something like Imported Mail.
10. Recreate your original mailbox structure by dragging the mail files (you can select multiple messages) from the folder in the imported mail to the place you want it, or originally had it. This is where the screenshots from Step 1 comes in handy. Drag mail from your imported inbox to the new inbox, etc.
Some mailboxes will not exist yet. If you don't have a "drafts" folder, for example, create a new message (to anyone - it doesn't even have to be a real address) and save it as a draft. This will create a drafts mailbox and you can then drag mail from your imported drafts to the newly created drafts mailbox. If there is no Trash mailbox, create a new message and then delete it, this will create a Trash mailbox. You can create some of the mailboxes from the Mailbox menu > Go To and choose the mailbox you want. For example, to create the trash folder. Go to Mailboxes->Go To->Trash (or command-5) and that will create a trash folder.
You may need to recreate your rules/filters. You are on your own there. Maybe document them in step 1 along with the other documentation you make of your previous setup.
This is a big problem for a lot of people. I've seen it enough to have figured it out and I documented the steps for fixing it. I hope this helps.

Imported Mailboxes are Empty

I just bought a new iMac and wanted to import all my old Mailboxes from my G4 Mail into my new version of Mail.
When I go to import, I select OS X and then select all the mailboxes. It appears to work fine, it imports without error, and then all the mailboxes appear in Mail, but when I go through the different folders, they're all empty. Every one of them. And when I quit mail and then restart. They're gone.
Anyone have any idea what's happening?
Thanks.

Hi Dave,
Thank you so much for responding so quickly. I have been told that Apple users are so helpful on this site! Tis true! I'm not sure what data format you are referring to (sorry, I'm a bit of a techie novice). The instructions I read on Move to Mac (on the Apple website) said to copy my Eudora folder and then use the import command to import messages. As I said, when I did this the mailboxes show up, but they are all empty.
I did use the Eudora Mailbox Cleaner and it transferred all of my mailboxes names (without the .mbx extension, which is nice) as well, but the folders do not contain any messages. I think perhaps I might be copying only part of the files I need, but I can't locate other Eudora folders on my machine. It just seems strange that it would transfer the mailbozes but no messages.
Any thoughts?
Trish

Since OS 7 my iPads are indicating 64 unread e-mails when all mailboxes are empty ?

Since installing IOS 7 on my iPads the mail states that I have 64 unread mails in red on the App, but the mail states that there are no unread mails. How can I fix this?
Popfaux

In the mail, hit Edit > Mark All > Mark as Read

Help!! I clicked on 'Rebuild' and all my mailboxes are empty!

help!
I have very very important emails that i store in my mailboxes, and now i have to get them back.
I can't download them from the email server because it has expired, thus not in use anymore.

I do have the same problem, only in the inbox.
it is dreadfull
The tips from elsewhere on this forum did not help.
Deleting the mailbox partially including many attachments is not very handy, the mail get unfindable and also it is an enormous amount of work.
I set my mail server at deletening after a month to give me a better schedule to solve this without losing many important mails.
Did you wind up with something helpfull?
If it does not work soon I switch to the microsoft mail program@#$$%&
Hubert

Export-Mailbox for legal discovery remove empty folders

Hi Everyone,
I'm having a bit of an issue with running an export mailbox search for a legal discovery that we need to perform. Basically we need to find any messages sent from two specific addresses to anyone within our company and export them to a mailbox for our legal
team to review. The problem that i'm running into is that the export-mailbox command copies the folder structure for each mailbox that it searches to the target mailbox. When the legal team attempts to open the mailbox its taking an extremely long
time for the target mailbox to open.
Is there any way to run the export-mailbox command and have it not copy the folder structure for users that have no messages related to the search ? I haven't been able to find anything about a command line option to not create empty folders so i'm assuming
this isn't a built in feature. If not has anyone had to deal with this issue before, if so what solution did you use to delete the empty folders folders in the target mailbox ?
We are running Exchange 2007 SP1

Hi Ragharam,
Thank you for the response. Unfortunately the command cannot be limited to just the inbox as i must search deleted items and any folders that the users created as well as the inbox. Pretty much i have to search every where for any existence of
these messages. I'm running a command that is similar to what you listed above and the export is working the problem is that we have roughly 5000 user mailboxes that we need to search. Since the export-mailbox command creates a folder for each
user that has been searched in the target mailbox and that folder contains each users folder structures the resulting mailbox or PST file pretty much just hangs the Outlook client as soon as its opened.
My hope is that there would be some way to only create folders for users that have matches to the search filter and not for the users that do not match or some way to delete the empty folders within the mailbox without having to open it.

Imported mailbox messages are empty

Hi all~
So I got my computer to let me import mailboxes (with help from a nice guy at the genius bar) but now the actual messages (which is the information I need) are empty. Any ideas?
Noreen

Hi Cliff,
I haven't tried this on 10.6.x yet, so not certain, but this can fix myriad Mail problems in 10.4.x/10.5.x...
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), it will try to repair your Disk Directory while the spinning radian is happening, so let it go, run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move this folder & file to the Desktop.
Move this Folder to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/
Move this file to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index
Reboot.
If that doesn't do it and you can afford to redo all your Rules, try these & reboot...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist.backup

Smart mailbox emails are empty

I created a couple of Smart Mailboxes and when I click on many of the emails in the folders, they are empty.
When I go to the same emails in the InBox all the inforamtion can be seen.
What am I missing?
Thanks.

Hi Cliff,
I haven't tried this on 10.6.x yet, so not certain, but this can fix myriad Mail problems in 10.4.x/10.5.x...
Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), it will try to repair your Disk Directory while the spinning radian is happening, so let it go, run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move this folder & file to the Desktop.
Move this Folder to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/
Move this file to the Desktop...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index
Reboot.
If that doesn't do it and you can afford to redo all your Rules, try these & reboot...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/MessageRules.plist.backup

I imported my IE Favorites folders but they are empty. I also tried exporting my IE Favorites to a html file but still did not work.

All of my folders came over but are empty. I also exported my IE Favorites to a html file and then imported them but they also came over empty and there are no favorite links shown that were not in folders. When I look at the html file, I can see all the links.

You only get a "From Internet Explorer" bookmarks folder if you use the Import wizard (Import Data from Another Browser).<br />
Otherwise the bookmarks should just be appended at the end of the Bookmarks Menu folder.
It is possible that the file path is too deeply nested if import isn't working.

My iPhone 4S shows I have over 6 GB of memory used for mail yet the mailboxes are more or less empty. Where is the memory going and how can I reduce it?

My iPhone 4S shows I have over 6 GB of memory used for mail yet the mailboxes are more or less empty. Where is the memory going and how can I reduce it?

I found a post with this solution that worked for me - .Do a backup, then download ibackupbot. It lets you look into the contents of that backup. Look in system files>mediadomain>library>sms>attachments. I found a ton of huge files related to long deleted texts. ibackupbot let me delete all that old crap. I then restored the phone with that now modifec backup and Bingo! freed up 9 GB. No problems.
But note, if you are not technically inclined you probaly don't want to be digging around and deleting back up files. You delete the wrong thing and you could jack up your phone badly. Be careful.

Exchange Server 2007 Cross Mailbox Search using Export-mailbox

Hi All.
We are trying to do some legal discovery but we are having a few problems.
Exchange 2007 (SBS 2008)
The command for a single user mailbox works and returns the results i would expect:
Export-Mailbox -Identity "User" -SenderKeywords "[email protected]" -TargetMailbox administrator -TargetFolder "Attempt2"
but the same command to run over the entire mailbox database is giving me wildly inaccurate results, including emails from senders with nothing to do with the "[email protected]" address
get-mailbox –Database "Mailbox Database" | Export-Mailbox -SenderKeywords "[email protected]" -TargetMailbox administrator -TargetFolder "Attempt2"
Not only that, but i also want to find out how NOT to include empty folders in the export. Because the "Administrator\Attempt 2" folder doesn't just include the exported messages, but actually includes the full subtree of folders, with lots
of empty folders?
Any help on the above would really be appreciated.
Thanks.
Ben Weinberg
Prime-Networks
www.prime-networks.co.uk
Please post the resolution to your issue so that everyone can benefit
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Hi ,
Thank you for posting your issue in the forum.
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Mailboxes STILL empty after importing from 10.3.9 to 10.4.11

Hi... I've been spending the last couple of days trawling the web (incl. this site) for solutions and have found similar postings, but they were either unresolved, or didn't really match my situation. So please excuse me if this is partially repetitive but hopefully someone can point me in a specific direction for resolution.
1) Under Mail 1.3.11 (Panther 10.3.9) I had stored several years of email (8+ GB... unfortunately my work requires me to keep everything) from 3 accounts - 1x IMAP, 2x POP. Most of my mail had been reorganised into various folders and mailboxes that contained a mixture of emails from all 3 source accounts. As far as I know, everything was healthy - no corruptions etc. except for the ubiquitous "not downloaded from server, take account online" problem.
2) When I transitioned to Mail 2.1.3 (Tiger 10.4.11) I used the Migration Assistant and got all my old Mail data over, changed all the file and folder permissions in olduser-Library-Mail to read and write, and used Import within Tiger Mail (and using the Other option as well). Everything seemed to move over into an Imported folder, and my hierarchy of subfolders remained correct, but all of them are empty.
3) Some suggestions I've found online have been to Rebuild the "empty" mailboxes/subfolders but the Rebuild option is grayed out whenever I select any mailbox/folder/subfolder.
4) There were some other suggestions to tinker with the insides of newuser-Library-Mail or olduser-Library-Mail but these were not for situations identical to mine so I'm hesitant to try for fear of making things worse.
5) For the moment, to continue working, I've set up a new account under Mail to fetch and send from my main IMAP account, but I don't have any of my old emails for reference ie. my new Tiger Mail has one mailbox (the Inbox) containing all my incoming mail from AFTER the upgrade... everything prior to that is on an external firewire drive that I can boot into (the old 10.3.9) as a reference backup. Curiously, eventhough I've set the new Tiger Mail to keep copies of outgoing mail, my Sent box remains empty and sometimes when I'm composing outgoing mail, I get a warning pop up about being unable to save into my IMAP outbox.
Do all of the above give any gurus out there a lightbulb moment as to what my problem might be and how I can solve it? Any help will be rewarded with eternal gratitude and my first grandchild. OK, maybe not the latter, but please help anyway!

No, Mail in 10.4 is not crap; it's actually better and more reliable than Mail in 10.5. So here's what I would do, though this will not preserve any folder hierarchy--you'd have to manually do that:
1. In your Panther Mail program, choose an account, a mailbox (Inbox for this example), and Select All messages in that mailbox.
2. Choose Save As… and choose Raw Message Source from the dialog window, then choose a destination (your Desktop) and save the file as Inbox.mbox.
3. After that file is saved, go to your Desktop and create two new folders: one named Inbox and the other named Mailbox.
4. Put the Inbox.mbox file inside the Mailbox folder, and the Mailbox folder inside the Inbox folder. Copy the nested folder/file to the Tiger machine if necessary so you can access it from Tiger Mail.
5. Open Tiger Mail, choose File >Import Mailboxes…, select Other from the list of import options, then navigate to the Inbox folder and select Choose. The file Inbox.mbox should appear in the window; click Continue and wait for the import to finish. You can then move the Inbox messages out of the Import folder to wherever you like in Tiger Mail.
6. Rinse and repeat for your other mailboxes, changing the names of nested folders/files as necessary.
Mulder

Export-Mailbox - DeleteContent not working

Server: Exchange 2007 SP3 RU 10
Client: Outlook 2010 SP1, OWA with IE 9
++++
According to this (and other sources)...
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb266964(v=exchg.80).aspx
I should be able to search for, and delete, messages using this command:
Get-Mailbox -Database DB1 | Export-Mailbox -SubjectKeywords "Virus message" -DeleteContent
"This example first gets all the mailboxes on database DB1, searches for items that contain the string "Virus message" in the subject, and deletes those items."
+++++
I only tried this because a colleague mentioned that he had tried and could not make it work. So I though I would investigate.
So I had test user Alan Reid send seven emails to test user Aisha Bhari. The subject was respectively: Blue, Red, Yellow, North, South, West and East. The content was "Export-Mailbox test 1" then 2, 3, 4, etc.
So at the start of the experiment, Aisha Bhari's Inbox looks like this:
Thinking, at first, that I needed to have an export folder (in fact, if I just want to delete, that is not necessary) I executed the following command:
export-mailbox [email protected] -TargetMailbox ExportMailbox -TargetFolder ForDeletion -SubjectKeywords
"Red" -DeleteContent
Then realizing that was not necessary, and that the processing of the Calendar and Contacts was delaying the experiment, I used this command:
export-mailbox [email protected] -SubjectKeywords "Red" -ExcludeFolders "\Calendar","\Contacts" -DeleteContent
I tried "Red" with and without quotes.
I tried "Blue" and "North". I tried the -ContentKeywords switch with strings like "mailbox" and "test".
The output that displays after the command is executed puzzles me. I read:
StandardMessagesDeleted          : 0
AssociatedMessagesDeleted        : 0
DumpsterMessagesDeleted          : 0
MoveType                         : DeleteOnly
MoveStage                        : Completed
StartTime                        : 12/26/2013 4:36:56 PM
EndTime                          : 12/26/2013 4:37:28 PM
StatusCode                       : 0
StatusMessage                    : Messages have been deleted from the source mailbox.
0 messages have been deleted and "Messages have been deleted from the source mailbox."
If I look at the content of Aisha's mailbox however, the message "Red" is still present, observed in both Outlook and OWA, after logging off and back on again. And thus, obviously, closing and opening both Outlook and OWA. What I see is what you
(still) see in the image posted above. That's it.
Does anyone know why this is not working?
+++++
What about the logs? Well, there is one created for each "export" attempt. Here is one example:
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Executing Command: 'get-mailbox
[email protected] | export-mailbox -ContentKeywords "Mailbox" -ExcludeFolders "\Calendar","\Contacts" -DeleteContent '
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Administrator Active Directory session settings are: View Entire Forest: 'False', Default Scope: 'mynet.lan', Configuration Domain Controller: 'DC2.mynet.lan',
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Searching objects "[email protected]" of type "ADUser" under the root "$null".
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Previous operation run on domain controller 'DC2.mynet.lan'.
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Previous operation run on domain controller 'DC2.mynet.lan'.
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Preparing to output objects. Maximum result set size "1000".
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Searching objects "mynet.lan/ExchangeUsers/Aisha.Bhari" of type "ADUser" under the root "$null".
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Previous operation run on global catalog server 'DC2.mynet.lan'.
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Processing object "mynet.lan/ExchangeUsers/Aisha.Bhari".
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Searching objects "ex1" of type "Server" under the root "$null".
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Previous operation run on domain controller 'DC2.mynet.lan'.
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Searching objects "ex1\SG1\MBXDB1" of type "MailboxDatabase" under the root "$null".
[12/26/2013 5:35:01 PM] [0] Previous operation run on domain controller 'DC2.mynet.lan'.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] Ending processing.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] Ending processing.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] The operation has started.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Approving object.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Trying to open mailbox:
szServerLegacyDN: /o=MYNET/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Configuration/cn=Servers/cn=ex1
szUserLegacyDN: /o=MYNET/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Recipients/cn=Aisha.Bhari
szServer: EX1.mynet.lan
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Open mailbox succeeded.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] The operation has finished.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] The operation has started.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Approving object.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Opening source mailbox.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Trying to open mailbox:
szServerLegacyDN: /o=MYNET/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Configuration/cn=Servers/cn=ex1
szUserLegacyDN: /o=MYNET/ou=Exchange Administrative Group (FYDIBOHF23SPDLT)/cn=Recipients/cn=Aisha.Bhari
szServer: EX1.mynet.lan
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Open mailbox succeeded.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Moving messages.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Exporting messages.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Merging messages.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] 0 items could not be moved to the target mailbox.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] Messages moved. Closing connections.
[12/26/2013 5:35:04 PM] [0] [Aisha.Bhari] The operation has finished.
Please mark as helpful if you find my contribution useful or as an answer if it does answer your question. That will encourage me - and others - to take time out to help you.

Hi David,
From your description, I would like to clarify the following things:
1. You need to grant the account which perform the task the full mailbox access permission.
2. Export-Mailbox only marks the items for delete. It doesn't actually delete them. So "-DeleteContent" only marks it for deletion. Your mailbox retention schedule will delete the actual emails.
Hope it helps.
If there are any problems, please feel free to let me know.
Best regards,
Amy
Amy Wang
TechNet Community Support

I backed up my itunes library to an external drive.It's 119 gb.It took about an hour.When I looked at the files it list the artists and albums but then says the files are empty.On the C drive of my own computer it says they are empty.Why would this be ?

When I open up my itunes library on my hard drive it says it contains 119 gb.I tried to look up individual songs under each album and artist.Every time I open an album it says the folder is empty.I exported the library earlier to an external hard drive.It took over an hour.When I look on that library it also says the files are empty,yet when open itunes and play songs they are all still there.Why doesn't the library list each song since it says it contains 119gb?

bzq wrote:
Niel, I tried that several times but the Choose Library screen never appeared.
Then try again.
Make sure iTunes is not running.
Hold the Option key.
Click the iTunes icon in the dock.
Select Choose library...
Select the iTunes folder you copied to the external
ITunes would boot up like usual but the only songs listed were in the Cloud. None of my Apps, Playlists, etc. appeared.
Because you moved the library and have not yet told iTunes to Choose the library you moved.

Exported Mailboxes are empty

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