Mac Main - transfer to different Mac

Question

Hi...I'd like to transfer my Mac Mail settings and messages from one Mac to another. Is there an export/import or can I just copy ./Library/Mail, or is there another way?
It's not a new Mac so I don't think Migration Assistant would work (besides the two Macs will be on different LANs). I heard .Mac could do it but I have 500MB so that seems a bit slow.
Any suggestions?
imac   Mac OS X (10.4.10)  

Answer 1

hey ernie,
thank you for another swift response.
01. apologies for confusing you with my friend eddie, who was here while i was drafting my responses to you.
02. the old macbook is 40 gb, and pretty much full. 37 gb.
the temporary ibook is 40 gb.
the new macbook will be 80 gb.
03. i was intending to wipe the ibook down completely, and then load a brand new os 10.4.9 into her, before i even began, so as to ensure that it's as clean a transfer as possible.
the temporary ibook would really just be a temporary holding facility, while i wait 24 or 48 hours for the new macbook.
04. because of that, as you say, doing a push in target disk mode seems like the simplest option.
thank you for the link in that regard.
05. the problems on the macbook are too numerous to mention.
basically, she's a year old, and has had so many hardware problems that apple have kindly agreed to simply swap her out for new.
therefore, it's not the hardware which is the issue here.
06. all i really care about is moving my mail across perfectly, without having to spend three days shoving it into countless folders.
as for why i had to break the mail into countless folders last time, i attach a july 2006 posting which i made.
i see now that it was migrating from mail 1.0 to mail 2.0.
hopefully all those problems will not be there if it's mail 2.0 to mail 2.0.
07. i take on board your advice about the plist.
are you saying that if i simply delete my mail preferences, it should correct the issue of removing the server copies automatically, without also losing all my flags, read and unread, etc ?
many thanks,
michael
july 2006:
i've read a lot of posts from a lot of people about this problem during the last few weeks, and the only solution does seem to be using a third party utility.
because what is certain is that the mail 2.0 import feature is just not robust enough to be able to cope with importing the average user's mail 1.0 folders.
as for the possibility that i haven't rebuilt my mailboxes, i refer you again to my post: "... YES, it is in our mail folder, and YES, we did full rebuilds of every mail folder, and YES, we trashed our mail preferences first."
and i'll also add: "and YES, we moved the envelope index to the trash as well.
disappearing messages in mail 2.0 is a worldwide problem.
indeed, within the last seven days alone, there have been 23 new topic threads about disappearing e-mails in these discussion pages.
now multiply that by the last nine months, and then add some.
then multiply that number by the number of mac tech sites which have only been able to come up with long, clunky workarounds, using emailchemy, etc.
mail 2.0 causing mailboxes to appear empty, and/or causing individual e-mails to apparently need to be downloaded again from a server which they were never on in the first place, is a global problem, which has been posted about all over the world's mac tech sites for nine months now.
yet apple has still done nothing about it.
as i say, i love apple, but what should have been built as one of apple's beautifully simple three-click upgrades has been built as a very naive, buggy application.
indeed, mail 2.0 has so many problems, both large and small, that i'm amazed the final build ever got signed off in cupertino.
MacBook1. 1.83 GHz. 512 MB.   Mac OS X (10.4.7)