Import Mail from Imac G5 PowerPc Panther to Imac 8.1 Intel with Leopard

Question

Hi,
I wonder if someone could be so kind as to outline the steps to transfer my mail and associated mail preferences (rules etc) from my old G5 PowerPC to my new Intel based IMAC. I'm a little unsure as I've heard various nightmare stories and also some rumour about emails not being readable once transferred across from the PowerPC based IMACS to the new Intel based IMACS.
My mail is extremely important so I'd rather proceed cautiously and correctly to ensure no loss of data.
Many thanks in advance
Q.

Answer 1

You can restore the iMac to initial condition with respect to Mail by removing the current Mail folder (Home/Library and locate the Mail folder) and the com.apple.mail.plist file from Home/Library/Preferences.
On the G5, first use Rebuild Mailbox on each mailbox before the next attempt to move the Mail folder and plist from the G5, while able to do so in Panther. Then read the following for background:
This happened a lot when people upgraded a single computer from 10.3 to 10.4 and Mail 2.x, but the issues are nearly the same if upgrading from 10.3 to 10.5, and much the same trying to migrate the Mail assets.
For background read the info in the topic at the link below, which while written about conversion from 10.3 to 10.4, would also structurally apply to a conversion from 10.3 to 10.5, even if using 10.4 in between. Sadly, it would appear the conversion process has not been strengthened, although the real fault lies with the condition of the mailboxes prior to Upgrade -- this is the purpose of making the index for each mailbox as healthy as possible before Mail tries to convert the structure on the mailboxes.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5664866&#5664866
In this situation the messages are not lost, but properly converting them for use in Mail 3.0 (or first in Mail 2.0) can be a detailed and tedious project. The best thing would be to have used Rebuild on every mailbox prior to the Upgrade. Of course I recognize that for those converting a single Mac it may be too late for that now, but you have opportunity to improve on that!
There is an issue often when going directly from 10.3.9 and Mail 1.3.11 related to conversion of the data in the mbox file into xxxx.emlx files in the Messages folder that Mail 3.x uses. The Messages folder came into use with 10.4.
An important comparison to make, after you know where to look in the Finder, is to compare the size of the mbox file in any xxxx.mbox folder to that of the Messages folder in the same mailbox. The reason to do this is check whether all messages that were in the mbox when the Upgrade was done were converted properly.
There can be issues if you ran a still earlier version of Mail, and other leftover files might then be present which could be problematic.
Please do not hesitate to ask any and all questions you need to ask to get comfortable with all you may need to do, depending on the number of large and complex mailboxes you had prior to the Upgrade.
If nothing else, be sure to read:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301315
which was mentioned the referenced topic.
Btw, if the Messages folder of any xxxx.mbox were to be near or over 2 GB all by itself there could be another problem called overstuffing.
Be sure to keep a copy of the prior Mail folder and plist available for further attempts if the next one does not succeed. The index structure has changed since 10.3, but in converting Mail can use the old form of one index per mailbox to the single universal index now called the Envelope Index. Using the old indexes and table of content info is what allows Mail to retain the relationship of incoming messages and replies to those messages.
Ernie