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

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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?

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?

Imported mailboxes are emptyo copy my mailboxes from G4

I tried to copy mailboxes from G4 Powerbook OS X 10.4.11 to G5 OS X 10.3. The mailboxes all imported OK to the "imported" file and al the files and sub mailboxes are there but none of the emails are in them. In Home/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/Imported on the G5 all the mailboxes are present and show the correct file sizes but in Mail programme no emails are present, just empty pages
Can anyone help?
Binks

Why would you be trying to import mail from 10.4 to 10.3? The mail formats for both versions of Mac OS X are completely different, so it's no surprise there's no email there. You would need to convert all your mail from 10.4 to the mbox format, then use the Import feature of Mail on 10.3 to import those messages.
To do that you need to use emlx to mbox converter.
Mulder

Emails in imported mailboxes are void of content

I just got a new MacPro with Leopard. My old G4 was too messed up to use Migration Assistant so I copied all my mailboxes to a drive and then imported them from this drive into my MacPro email. The G4 was running the latest version of Tiger and I was using Mac Mail on both. I see all the emails in the mailboxes but when I click on them, they are empty. There is no content in the emails I imported.
What is the deal with this and why does Mac Mail have to be built into the OS in such a complicated way? I remember when you could easily see your separate iCal Calendars and copy them around easily. Now that's complicated too. Why?

If you actually see the messages displayed in Mail, then perhaps you should rebuild your Mail index like this:
1. Quit Mail if it's running.
2. Go to ~/Library/Mail and delete the Envelope Index file(s).
3. Restart Mail and wait for it to import your existing messages; then check to see if the problem is resolved.
Mulder

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.

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

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

Where do imported mailboxes get stored

I used a PST converter to convert my PST files to .mbox and imported those into MAC mail but after looking around, mailboxes are stored in the user/library/mail/mailboxes folder but that doesn't exist so I don't know where my imported mailboxes are currently being stored.
Thanks

You can sometimes get the URL to the .SWF (flash) file by examinig the "Activity Window" in Safari.
Once you have your hands on the direct URL to that file, you can dump it into a HTML link tag, save as HTML and use it to download the file.
Example:
in Textedit, open a new file, put this in it...
This is the link
then save as whatevername.html
Just double-click the new HTML file, Safari will open it up. Then CTRL+Click the link, and select "Download Linked File".
Beavis2084

Side mailbox area in disarray

I just imported mailboxes using Eudora mailbox cleaner from TBird to Mail, but the mailboxes aren't arrayed as I would like.
If someone could tell me how to add a screen grab to a message here, I could better explain my problem with a picture...

You’re welcome.
You appear to be confused by the names of the mailboxes. The imported mailboxes are named that way simply because that’s how they were named originally, but imported mailboxes are like any other custom mailboxes you might create manually yourself and have no special meaning as far as Mail goes. You can rename the imported mailboxes if you wish or move the messages they contain to the predefined account’s Inbox, Sent, etc. if that’s where you want them to be.
Here’s a more thorough explanation of how mailboxes are supposed to appear in Mail:
1. Instead of grouping mailboxes by account, Mail groups mailboxes by purpose first, regardless of whether they are stored locally or on the server, then groups by account the mailboxes that don’t serve a specific purpose in Mail. If you have more than one mail account, each has its own Inbox, Drafts, Sent, Trash and Junk mailboxes, which appear under the respective group showing the account name instead of the real name of the associated mailbox in the filesystem.
This has the advantage of letting you choose at any time, and independently for each mailbox, whether you want to look at your Inbox, Sent, Trash, etc. mailboxes as if you had just one of them shared by all accounts (i.e. an aggregate), or look at each of the corresponding individual mailboxes separately.
2. Each mailbox under a pre-defined group is associated with a mailbox in the filesystem whose name may or may not be exactly the same as the name of the corresponding mailbox group. By default, the name of the actual mailboxes in the filesystem associated with Sent and Trash, for example, would be Sent Messages and Deleted Messages, respectively.
3. The association between a mailbox in a pre-defined group and the actual mailbox in the filesystem is fixed for POP accounts, but can be changed for IMAP accounts by means of Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For or the corresponding Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors > Store messages on the server setting.
4. Mail may defer the creation of a pre-defined mailbox until actually needed to store messages there. Also, in some circumstances Mail may be unable to create or locate the actual mailbox in the filesystem (see #10 below for an example), but the association does still exist in those cases from a logical point of view, even though Mail may be unable to display or store messages there.
5. Each and every mailbox appears once and only once in the mailbox list, be it (1) under one of the pre-defined groups with an icon that conveys its purpose and the name of the account it belongs to (if you have more than one mail account), or (2) with a generic folder icon and the real name of the associated mailbox in the filesystem if it serves no specific purpose as far as Mail goes. Under no circumstances can the same mailbox appear both ways; it’s either one or the other, depending solely on whether it serves a specific purpose in Mail or it’s treated by Mail as a generic mailbox like any other.
6. By itself, the name of the mailbox is no indication of whether it serves a purpose in Mail. If it appears in Mail with a generic folder icon, then as far as Mail goes it’s a generic mailbox like any other, no matter what its name.
7. For IMAP accounts, a mailbox with a generic folder icon can “disappear” and become associated with one of the pre-defined groups as a result of changing the corresponding Store messages on the server setting in Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors or doing Mailbox > Use This Mailbox For on it (server-stored mailboxes only). This, in turn, would cause the mailbox being previously used for that purpose to become dissociated from the corresponding group and “appear” as a mailbox with a generic folder icon.
8. In addition to the account-specific mailboxes that appear with the account name under each of the pre-defined groups, Trash and Junk may also have an “On My Mac” mailbox. This is where messages deleted or marked as junk are moved if they were previously stored in a custom “On My Mac” mailbox or in a locally stored mailbox associated with an IMAP account (i.e. a mailbox for which Store messages on the server has been turned OFF in Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors).
9. Generic mailboxes that don’t serve a specific purpose as far as Mail goes (i.e. mailboxes that appear in Mail with a generic folder icon), appear below the pre-defined groups. In principle, “On My Mac” mailboxes (i.e. locally stored custom mailboxes) would appear as top-level folders, whereas server-stored mailboxes would appear grouped under a globe icon for each IMAP or .Mac account. However, if there is no need to differentiate between “On My Mac” and server-stored mailboxes (e.g. because you only have one IMAP account and no custom “On My Mac” mailboxes), Mail will display the server-stored mailboxes as top-level folders instead, just as if they were “On My Mac” mailboxes.
10. Some IMAP accounts use a NAMESPACE feature that Mail doesn’t handle properly and that causes server-stored mailboxes to appear as subfolders of the account’s Inbox, even though they really aren’t — see “Can't create folders, only subfolders of INBOX” in the Courier FAQ, for example. Those IMAP accounts require INBOX to be typed in Preferences > Accounts > Advanced > IMAP Path Prefix for Mail to handle them properly.

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

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

Imported Mailboxes Showing Up Empty

Hi there.
I'm trying to import mailboxes from one mac to another, the source mac is 10.4 and the other is 10.3. Everything seems to go smoothly, the mailboxes show up in Mail but they're all empty. In Finder the size of the folders are right but there are no emlx files in there.
Any ideas?
Thanks.

Going backwards, (1.4 to 10.3) may be the problem... no way for 10.3 to know about the changes.
What are the Permissions on those folders?

Imported mailboxes empty

I have tried to import my mailboxes from one computer (all macs running mail) to another, but for one account this was completely unsuccessful. The folders all appear, but are all empty. Is it because I am trying to import mail from 2.0 to 1.3? In another account, all mailboxes were successfully imported except the inbox. In this case, I was restoring after replacing the hard drive, so I was importing into the same version of Mail.

There is no straightforward way to transfer your mail from Mail 2.x to Mail 1.x. The mailbox format used by Mail changed drastically in Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). Mail 2.x knows about the old format and can import or convert in place mailboxes created by Mail 1.x, but Mail 1.x obviously knows nothing about the new format used by Mail 2.x.
Although .mbox packages appear to be files in Mac OS X 10.3, they’re actually folders just like in Mac OS X 10.4. If you’re currently running Mac OS X 10.3, ctrl-click on an .mbox package and choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu to see the files it contains.
For each mailbox, Mail 1.x stores all the messages in a single file in standard mbox format (the mbox file within the .mbox folder/package), whereas Mail 2.x stores messages in individual .emlx files within a Messages folder that Mail 1.x knows nothing about.
The only way to transfer Mail 2.x mailboxes to Mail 1.x is by first exporting or converting them to a (standard mbox) format that Mail 1.x understands, then importing them in Mail 1.x.
Selected messages can be exported to standard mbox format by doing File > Save As in Mail and choosing Raw Message Source from the Format popup menu. Standard mbox files can be imported into most mail clients. In particular, they can be imported back into Mail doing File > Import Mailboxes and choosing Other / Standard mbox as the data format.
Andreas Amann’s Mail Scripts has an Archive Messages script that you may find useful for this.
Alternatively, you may use emlx to mbox Converter or Emailchemy to convert the .emlx files to standard mbox format.
Also, pay attention to the instructions that Mail displays when choosing a data format in File > Import Mailboxes. Mail wants you to select the folder that contains the mailboxes to be imported, not the mailboxes themselves. This allows you to import all the exported mailboxes at once.

EMPTY IMPORTED MAILBOX

Hi,
just moved some emails (3700inbox, 1900outbox) from Outlook (via Thunderbird), and experiencing some problems: when directly importing the .mbox file into Mail.app 300 emails are lost, though the rest are correctly in the imported mailbox. I have also used Eudora Mailbox Cleaner, as suggested, but even after "rebuilding" imported mailboxes, they are empty, without a single email.
Any suggestion?
Thanks,
xavier

I have made the decision to switch to the Mail application from Thunderbird. The Mail application is version 3.5 and Thunderbird is version 2.0.0.17. I have been attempting to import the mailboxes from Thunderbird using the Mail instructions with very little success. Some mailboxes it will import all of the mail, others some of the contents and then some only the folder with no contents. There is no rhyme or reason why it works for some and not others. I have approximately 9000 emails within 120 folders on Thunderbird. I have tried importing them using the Thunderbird and Mozilla options in mail. I have also tried importing only one folder at a time with no luck and always ending with the same result for each folder. Also, Mail has repeatedly crashed while attempting the imports. Importing these mailboxes is critical for my long-term use of Mail. Any Help Offered would be greatly appreciated.
Mark McKenna

I have iphoto 08 version 7.1.5. I copied photos from recent - last import into albums. I then deleted the photos and emptied the trash. Today all the albums are empty and the photos are nowhere in the library. Have I lost them all?

I have iphoto 08 version 7.1.5. I copied photos from recent - last import into albums. I then deleted the photos and emptied the trash. Today all the albums are empty and the photos are nowhere in the library. Have I lost them all?

OK, here are a set of screenshots with my step by step - maybe you will be able to spot where I've gone awry:
I find a photo in the Library that I will delete from an album:
I go down to my Albums and find the picture in one of them:
I hover over the pic so the little down arrow appears in the bottom right-hand corner. I click on it, then click on the Trash Can in the window that drops down:
Gone from the Album:
Gone from the Library:
In the Trash:
Whaddup with that?
GB

Imported Mailboxes are Empty

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