How do I backup Mail mailboxes?

Ok, I am preparing to do a complete resinstall of OS X and will need to backup my individual mail folders/mailboxes. How do i do this? I've copied the mail preferences but how do i save the email messages themselves so that I can just import them from a file after my reinstall?

Duh! I figured it out, you just drag the folders to the desktop. Should've known Mac would make it that easy!

Similar Messages

How do I get MAIL mailbox passwords to stay set?

I've recently upgraded to OS 10.4.9 and my MAIL mailbox passwords will not stay set. I am asked for the password for each mailbox every time. I've tried all the suggestions/instructions in Mail help but my save password check is always ignored. Any suggestions s to how i can get MAIL to behave as it's supposed to?

Open /Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access, choose Keychain First Aid from the application menu, and proceed to repair the keychain. If that doesn’t work, try removing the password entries from the keychain and letting Mail create them again the next time it asks for them.
If the problem persists, try this:
1. In Keychain Access > Preferences > General, click Reset My Keychain and proceed as requested. A new (empty) login keychain should be created and the old one renamed and removed from the keychain list, but not deleted.
2. You can add the old (renamed) keychain (stored in ~/Library/Keychains/) back to the keychain list by clicking the [+] button in Edit > Keychain List.
3. You can move/copy password entries from the old keychain to the new one if wish.

How do I copy mail mailbox folders from an external drive

My old Macbook Air (2009) has died - logic board failed - so I have removed the ssd drive and mounted it in a Runcore usb enclosure from C Memory - worked a treat. I would like to copy a number of Mail mailboxes I used for archiving old email messages from this drive on to my new Macbook Air but cannot see them or the user library folders on the now external drive. Any ideas welcome. Tim

Copy the contents of the folder on the external drive to your user folder on the new hard drive. Example - replace the Music folder with the old one. If you have folders that are the same name it should ask you if it is okay to replace the new ones. Be sure you don't have anything in the folders you replace, as you would lose any contents.

How to recover deleted mail/mailbox?

While trying to solve a problem I had with a mailbox in Mac Mail, I deleted the mailbox. I only took the precaution to save the Inbox in a different location but not the Sent mail. Big mistake. After deleting the mailbox I found out that it also deleted all the mails in the Sent folder, some of which are very important to me.
I looked for suggestions in the Apple Support Communities and found what seemed to be the answer to my problem: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/613328?start=0&tstart=0
This is what I did as Geoffrey Charters suggested:
Step 1: Download FileSalvage (https://secure.subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/Undelete/DataRecovery/FileSalvage) and run it in demo mode. In this mode, you can only explore, which is OK. Set the "free space only" option and start the scan. It takes a while. You should see your deleted .emlx files in the resulting list. Select one and make sure the preview pane contains email headers. That way you'll know you are in good shape. If so...
Step 2: Buy a registration code for FileSalvage, and use the "Register" menu item in FileSalvage to enable the full version.
Step 3: Select all the batches of 100 .emlx file that have been found and restore them to your second disk drive.
And then as David Gimeno Gost suggested:
1. Create a folder on the Desktop and name it however you want, but give it an .mbox suffix, e.g. Recovered.mbox
2. Within that folder, create a folder named Messages (with no suffix), and move the messages to be imported into this folder.
3. In Mail, do File > Import Mailboxes, choose Mail for Mac OS X as the data format, and follow the instructions. Note that Mail wants you to select the folder that contains the *.mbox folders to be imported (i.e. the Desktop in this case), not the *.mbox folders themselves.
After running FileSalvage for 4 days that it took to scan all my drive byte by byte, it found the files I needed and I could even preview parts of the messages I was looking for. Everything looked promissing. I recovered such files and stored them in a secondary drive.
This is where the new problem starts. All the retreived files are stored in the secondary drive but when I try to preview any of them using Finder, just a blank page opens. I also tried importing them to Mail as David Gimeno suggested but, although an imported mailbox was created, all the messages there are blank. I can even see in the size column in Mail that every message is 0 bytes.
I know that somehow the information that I need is stored in the files I recovered with FileSalvage, because when I browse through such files using Finder, I can see that they have different sizes. So, the information must be there, I just don't know how to access it.
Has anybody had this problem? Any suggestions?

Appart from solving with a backup, do you know any other way I could get my information back, according to the description I made?

How to Retrieve Deleted Mail (Mailbox accidentally deleted)

I accidentally deleted an email account (using MacMail) and lost all of the Sent mail from that account. I created a new account with the same information (except a new server), and the old incoming mail is there, but not the Sent mail. Any idea how to retrieve the Sent mail?

Deleting a mail account causes all your mail stored in that account’s mailboxes to be removed from the computer as well, and you were warned that this would happen by the following alert:
Remove Account
Are you sure you want to remove the <AccountType> account "<AccountName>"?
This will permanently delete the account setup information, mailboxes, and messages from your computer. Messages stored on the mail server will not be affected.For IMAP-type accounts, this is not a problem because mail is stored on the server. If you deleted a POP account, however, your mail has been wiped out from the computer, not just moved somewhere.
To prevent that from happening, you should have moved your mail to custom “On My Mac” mailboxes instead of leaving it in the account’s mailboxes. Actually, using the account’s Inbox and Sent mailboxes for archiving purposes is a bad idea regardless.
If the POP account was configured to leave the messages on the server for some time, setting up the account again would cause any messages still on the server to be downloaded again, just like for IMAP accounts, but this would only work for received mail that has not yet been removed from the server.
If the messages are not on the server and you don’t have a backup (which you should have made before doing something like that), you may try to salvage as many deleted .emlx files as possible with a data recovery tool such as Data Rescue II or FileSalvage (the files to be recovered would be different in the case of Mail 1.x). Of these, the only one I know for sure that can currently recover deleted .emlx files is FileSalvage. Stop using the computer right now if you want to try that, as anything you do with it may cause the deleted files to be overwritten.

How do I backup mail signatures

Hi
I am going to upgrade my OS to lion & was wondering how to backup important stuff like my email signatures that I can load once the OS is installed.
Any help would be great, never really back things up before oh, oh!

Hello, it'd be best to have a complete backup before you upgrade, but in theory 1st Installing 10.6/Snow Leopard, which you need to get Lion, should preserve all those things.
Second best would be to copy tour whole Home folder, next best would be...
On Mail...
First Quit Mail, then I'd backup these two Mail folders, by right clicking on them in the Finder, then choose Archive/Compress.
Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail (Signatures are in this folder)
Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail Downloads
(Could be a different folder here if you chose such in Mail Prefs)
Right click on that Mail folder, choose archive, you'll get everything in the folder, and the folder itself in a file called Mail.zip, move it to a safe place, same for the Mail Downloads folder... only the plist is separate.
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
For Address Book, quit AB...
Files...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.plist
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/com.apple.AddressBook.abd.plist
Folders...
/Users/YourUserName/Library/Application Support/AddressBook/

How can i view mail mailbox folders on my iphone

I have created folders or mailboxes on my iMac. When I move mail to one of these folders I would still like to be able to access it from my iphone but can't seem to do that. From my iphone, I can only view mail in "inbox", "sent", etc. but not folders/mailboxes I created to help me organize my mail.
Thanks,
bj

Thanks for looking. My mail account is a Gmail Google IMAP account. It is the only account I have and is working well with Apple Mail. But I created some folders/mailboxes in Apple Mail to organize my mail with, and on the iMac this all works fine. But when I check my Mail on my iPhone, I can not check the emails that I moved to the various folders I created on the iMac. ??? I'm starting to think there is something simple I'm missing here but not sure. Thanks

How do i remove an e-mail mailbox from my iPad (leaving one behind)?

How do I remove an e-mail mailbox from my iPad, as it appears to be causing problems with an nhs.net account?

You can deactivate an email account in Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > the account > Account. Turn it OFF.

How can I remove a mailbox address from the "From" drop down box in a new e-mail my old e-mail address continue to populate as the sender address

How can I remove a mailbox address from the "From" drop down box in a new e-mail my old e-mail address continue to populate as the sender address

Hello,
Try Mail>Preferences>Accounts icon>Account Information tab>Click on the Outgoing SMTP server drop down, choose edit Server list, highlight the old one & click Remove.
(Such convolution is worthy of Windows® in my estimation)

In Mail how do I link a mailbox to an account?

This is pretty elementary but I've never used mailboxes other than the main inboxes of my two accounts. How do I create a mailbox (not to be confused with the Inbox) for a specific account?
I ask because I'm trying an Applescript that involves moving mail to a destination mailbox "of account 'X' " (or 'Gmail' in my case) from the Inbox. Mail Help sets out how to create a mailbox but not how to associate it with a particular account, unless I'm missing something. Mail offers me the location "On My Mac" but that's about it.

First create a mailbox to hold your messages.
Next go to Mail > Preferences > Rules and add a new rule. Give it a name then select "if ANY of the following are met:" Select "Account" and the name of the Account. For the action select "Move Message" to mailbox "Your mailbox's name."

How can I add a "junk mail" mailbox?

How can I add a "junk mail" mailbox, or any other mailbox to my email?

If you have an IMAP email account then you can create additional folders by logging into your email account on a browser and creating them there - they should then appear in the Mail. If you have a POP email account then you're stuck with the folders that you've got.

How do I select & burn mailboxes in Apple's Mail to a disk?

How can I select & burn mailboxes in Apple's Mail program to a disk?

Try this, go to your home folder>library>mail>mailboxes, put in a blank CD, click OK open in finder.Highlight the CD, drag and drop the mailbox you wish to copy on the CD and right click on the CD, from the pop up menu click burn to disk.

"Import Mailboxes" can't see IMAP inbox in backup Mail folder

So, a friend of mine thought he'd be efficient and, via the webmail interface, deleted all the messages in the Inboxes of two IMAP accounts (hosted by Fatcow). He did not understand that this would delete all the messages in the inboxes on his computer, too. He understands IMAP better now that we've had a talk!*
We have a backup copy of his ~Library/Mail folder, and I thought it would be a piece of cake to use Import Mailboxes to reimport those missing messages back into Mail, from where he could drag them back into the Inboxes in the cloud. Being a Mac consultant, I have done this very thing many times.
However, no matter what we do, the Import Mailboxes dialog will not offer those two inboxes in the list of mailboxes to choose from. We see all the other boxes, including two inactive POP accounts. When we look inside the backup Mail folder in the Finder, we can open the IMAP folder for each account and burrow down to the actual messages. The hierarchy there is kind of too deep, perhaps because the IMAP Path Prefix in his account preferences is incorrect--one of the accounts has the final Inbox with the messages inside another Inbox folder inside the IMAP account folder**. This is the only reason I can think of that Import Mailboxes would not be able to see those inboxes. Does anyone know if it would work if I moved the final Inbox folder higher up in the hierarchy?
Thanks very much for any assistance.
*Please don't ask why he wasn't using Time Machine. He will be, very soon.
**I can't reproduce it exactly here because I was working with him over a LogMeIn connection, as he's in another state. Geographically speaking, not emotionally.

in finder rename the backup imap inbox from INBOX.imapmbox to INBOX.mbox. then Mail will let you import it if you choose it directly when importing mail.

How do I hide my mailbox and mail contents from other users, leaving other functions of my iMac accessible?

How do I hide my mailbox and mail contents from other users, leaving other functions of my iMac accessible?

You don't have to shut down the computer to switch accounts. All you do is click the Apple symbol in the upper left and choose Log Out and that's it. You can also set up Faster User Switching by:
1. Open System Preferences - Accounts
2. Click Login Options
3. Check the box called "Show fast user switching menu as" then choose from either icon, short name or name.
Then when someone wants to switch users they can. The advantage of this method is if you are have a document open and don't want to close it the document will remain open. If the other user attempts to shut down the computer they can't until you have logged out thereby saving all your data.
A very simple and elegant solution.

How to backup mail in 10.3.9

I'd like to know how to backup Mail in 10.3.9.
Help says to:
Copy all the files located in Home/Library/Mail.
Copy the file "com.apple.mail.plist," located in Home/Library/Preferences.
Copy the folder "AddressBook," located in Home/Library/Application Support.
NONE OF THESE THINGS EXIST on my computer. No folder called Mail in the Library. No folder called AddressBook in Application Support. No file called com.apple.mail.plist in Preference.
Please tell me how to backup my Mail.

Hi Sue,
Are you sure you are looking in the library folder within your account
HD/Users/youraccount/Library
and not in
HD/Library
or
HD/System/Library

How do I backup Mail mailboxes?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for