Mail Archive and Backup

Is there any program or set of instructions on how to backup mail and archive it? I'd like to backup my mail and be able to restore it if needed, but I don't know all the files or process to do so. Any advice would be appreciated.
Thanks!

to: david gimeno gost
That’s not how this works. People here post about their problems without addressing them to anyone in particular.
thought you might be able to help me.
Not if you post about your problem in a thread that discusses something else. This is called threadjacking, and goes against the Terms of Use of these forums:
Threadjack—To wrongly post a dissimilar issue in an existing discussion, distracting from the true focus of the discussion. If your issue has any significant difference from a similar topic, then you're probably better off posting a new topic to focus attention on your particular issue.Hence, please either find a thread that discusses the same problem, or start a new topic to properly discuss your problem in its own thread. I or someone else will probably help you there.

Similar Messages

Mail Services and Backup MX/mail services

I have a question regarding backup mail services and acceptance of incoming messages.
As of last week, I am new to the world of Mail Services in OS X Server 10.4. Last week, our current email server died and I was forced to take an Xserve G4 that had OS X Server 10.4.10 (unlimited) and setup mail services in order to receive and send mail. I went to a website called osx.topicdesk.com and followed their instructions for front-line spam defense and clamAV updating (and switching to clamd) which all appears to be working OK.
Because our old email server was having some hardware issues for the past several months that I had been working on, I had the feeling that failure might happen. So what I did a few months ago was sign up for Google Apps and their mail service. I added their MX records under my primary mail server so that in the case of a failure of my server, all mail would be passed to Gmail and everyone could get to their mail immediately (as any prolonged downtime won't work since this is a daily newspaper). This did work, for when my old server died, all the mail went immediately to the appropriate Google Apps mail accounts. After about a day of setup on the Xserve, I got the mail services running OK. I gave it all the same IP info as the previous server so that the mail would just start working without having to edit DNS records and such.
The problem I am having seems to be this: While I get most mail, some of my mail is still getting sent to the Google Apps accounts. For example, I have one user, Jane Doe, at [email protected] who gets most of their mail from connecting to the OS X Server, but about 2 - 3 emails a day get passed over to the Google Apps server. I have run DNSStuff.com tests on the mail connections, and I always get a good fast response out of the OS X server. My thinking was that mail would only be passed over to backup mail servers if the first server listed in the MX records was unavailable or offline. In all of my testing, my server has responded every time. The server is connecting via a gigabit network connection (good response), is a dual G4 1.33Ghz, 60GB hard drive with 2GB of RAM. This server doesn't do anything else except run Mail services (and web services for squirrelmail), it doesn't even have file sharing turned on.
My old email server was a Pentium II 400mhz with 348MB of RAM, and it caught all mail, so I know that the Xserve should be able to handle the load without being busy. Is there any reason that my Xserve would be rejecting mail and they would be siphoned off to the Google accounts?
Is this even a possible scenario to fix the problem: Setup a backup MX "queue" account somewhere with one of the BackupMX online services that will catch these stray emails and then send it back to the primary server? But then can be turned off quickly to allow mail to go to the Google Apps accounts if my server went down. In other words, the DNS record would show my primary as 1, the backup mx service as 2, the google servers as 3, 4, 5 and so on. Can Backup MX services be turned off quickly like that so that if my server is down and I need email to be accessed immediately then just "turn off" the service (without modifying the DNS since that will take too long to propogate) so that mail bounces over to Google immediately?
I guess my first troubleshooting attempt should be to figure out why my OS X Server is not accepting all mail.
Thanks in advance for any help and suggestions.
G

When I first started with the company about 2 years ago, they had a really old Linux box (about 10 years old) that was used to host email. It was horrible. It would run OK, but if it ever went down or had a hiccup, it was an all-day project trying to deal with it. Unfortunately, the company did not want to spend any money on a new server or software of course. The answer I got was "well, it's just email". Sure, but if email EVER goes down for more than 15 seconds, all of the employees go into seizures and scream that the place will have to shut down. I work for a daily newspaper, so everything is running 24/7.
Knowing that one day that box was going to just die, I looked into some backup MX services. As pterobyte had mentioned is that with a secondary MX, the problem is that no one can get their mail at all until the primary server comes back up. I knew if that server ever went down, I had nothing to take its place, so I would have to order something or get a server from another location to use. Being unfamiliar with OS X Mail Services, I knew it would take me awhile to try to setup all the users and such. All the while at the newspaper, they would be screaming bloody murder that they needed email working for news, ads coming in, etc. And when I say if it goes down for 10 minutes they start getting into fetal positions in the floor screaming, I'm not far off exaggerating. I figured I was going to need something in place for them to check email while I worked on the primary.
Back in September/October 2007, I discovered that Google hosted free mail services call Google Apps. With Google, I could setup "matching" accounts and would still be able to use my domain name. You just had to use Google's servers as the higher numbered MX records. Luckily, I set up in time for back in November, the Linux box finally died. When it did, all email successfully went to their counterparts on the Google's servers. I had everyone go to the special Google Apps login site and they were able to check their email fine. I ended up having to take a box from another site and then I had another copy of OS X Server 10.4, so I loaded it and successfully setup email (with lots of help from pterobyte's tutorials). They were on Google's systems for about 2 days.
After the disaster, I went around and setup IMAP accounts on everyone's Thunderbird clients so that if our email server went down, they just simply check that mailbox. The nice thing with the Google IMAP is that they automatically see if emails are hitting that inbox from within their client. Right now, it still remains that the 2 original companies that hit the Google accounts still do. The city government email and email from a sister newspaper. Everything else gets directed to the primary server. Although sometimes that doesn't even work, as tonight I am having to work on a problem involving the Clamd app acting up - taking up nearly 100% of the CPU which in turn caused all the mail to be hung up in the queue. So since the mail server didn't "reject" the mail and grabbed it, their gmail "backup" didn't get anything in it. It was taking me forever to figure out what was going on, so I almost just told them to unplug the network cable from the email server so that everything definitely would be forwarded to gmail.
My wish is that I had a secondary mail server in house to not even worry about it - or better yet, I wished I could just outsource the email administration itself to someone else (like webmail.us which is now MailSafe). That way for the most part, they wouldn't lose email. But of course, the company doesn't want to spend the money or invest. Just gripe when the older equipment we have won't support what they want to do with it.
But the story above explains why I did what I did with the Google's servers. I do appreciate everyone's help and input on this particular problem. I am going to look around at the DNS and talk to at least our sister newspaper to see if I can see how they have their DNS setup.
Thanks!
G

Mail archival and status of the archived mail

I use IMAP to talk to microsoft exchange server. When the server complained that the mailbox was full, I decided to archive the mail and delete it from server. Then I imported the archived mail. But to my surprise ALL of my mails in that archive are showing up as "unread". I had about 100 or so unread emails when they were in the server, but I have now lost the knowledge of which ones, because everything is showing up as unread.
Am I doing some thing wrong in the archival process? Why isn't Mail.app preserving the [un]read status of the mails during archival process?
Thanks
Siva

this is the default behavior. Mail archives messages in mbox format that is used by many mail clients. this is just a plain text file containing the raw source of the messages. read status is not contained in that file. hence when mail imports an archive like this it has to treat all messages as new.

[ Bug ? ] Mail archive - discussion thread not visible if archive 'too early'

Hello,
I feel like something is wrong concerning mail archive and thread/discussions. I explain :
- Septembre : I receive a mail and I archive it, via Gmail, in the XX category
- Octobre and Novembre : this mail become a thread, people answer, I answer etc... The discussion ends and I archived it, via Gmail, so that it's not in my Incoming box anymore. (so : it's the second time I archive it )
- Today : I want to read again what we talked about in this thread, so I go to my XX category via iOS Mail app.
> Here is the problem: I only see the the first mail of the thead, I have to 'unarchive' it and 're-archive it' so that all the mails in this discussion ( so the thread ) are totally visible when I go to my XX category via the Mail app. (of course, no problem with gmail interface)
Someone may confirm ?
Did I miss something ?
cya

No one got that problem ?

External working and backup setup - Thunderbolt or NAS? Working location photographer

Lifestyle photographer, work on location. Meaning I shot a lot of files per shoot day (1500 per working day) and I'm on location, away from my studio and main computer (Cheese-grater Mac Pro).
My current archive and backup is on a multi bay e-sata JBOD, which is old and in need of being brought up to date.
My desktop is a Mac Pro, no Thunderbolt, infact it's still USB 2, though if I keep it as my main studio machine , I can put in a USB 3 card.
My location laptop is a MBP with Thunderbolt.
I'm trying to decide if I should go Thunderbolt external HD for my external archive, backups and even working files (which would mean working off my MBP and essentially ditching the Mac Pro box), or if I should go NAS, which is still only available as USB3, but which gives me the ability (from what I've heard) to access my image files from the cloud when I'm on location and a client wants images.
I'm using Lightroom as my main image interface more and more with the way my business is moving. I still prefer to do final polishing of colour treatments / grading in Photoshop, but I'm not doing much heavy work - compositing etc, with Photoshop.
Would love to hear pro's and con's of the two setups from other who shoot a lot of image files and are on the road a lot.
Thanks!!!

Trevnew wrote:
when looked in preferences the old location was still there, eventually changed in preferences
Trev,
changing iTunes media folder location via preferences > advanced tells iTunes where to put new additions to your library, not where the current content is.
also, with your library now on the NAS, you must make sure the NAS is mounted on your desktop before launching iTunes.
... still showed an issue with the file locations and the exclamation marks.
you may have done something wrong initially (during re-locating your library to the NAS) because the exclamation marks usually appear when media files were moved using the finder and iTunes lost track of their location.
you might be able to use this script:
iTunes Track CPR v1.3
This script attempts to locate the files of so-called "dead tracks"--iTunes tracks designated with (!)--that you assume are not actually missing but are still located in the iTunes Music folder in their "iTunes File Order" (Music -> Artist -> Album -> file.xxx)."

Best Way to Backup Mail, Archive or Drag and Drop?

I'm going to perform a clean install on a 4 year old G5 at work and I'm backing up the mail but I was curious if the Drag and Drop method I've used in the past is the most efficient? In the past, I've just copied the entire mail folder to a backup location and then when the reformat was finished, replaced the new mail folders with the old one.
I've actually never noticed the "Archive Mailbox" or the "Import Mailboxes" options before and was curious if going the Archive then Import route is a better/safer option or if my old method works just fine (I've not seemingly had any problems in the past).

In my experience copying the entire Mail folder is the most trouble free method. Mail archives sometimes fail to restore. Archiving also doesn't save all the support files in the Mail folder.

HT4847 In preparing for iCloud storage to be reduced to 5GB, I have deleted all my emails (via internet to iCloud) including all inboxes, sent mail, archived etc. HOWEVER my iPhone (under Settings iCloud Storage and Backup Manage Storage says I have 8.5 G

In preparing for iCloud storage to be reduced to 5GB, I have deleted all my emails (via internet to iCloud) including all inboxes, sent mail, archived etc. HOWEVER my iPhone (under Settings>iCloud>Storage and Backup>Manage Storage says I have 8.5 GB. Please help!

The only thing I can think of that may cause this would be storage buffering. See http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4873.

I need help to recover/relink mail after archive and install

I am helping my friend fix her 15" G4 PowerBook after memory failures caused many crashes. There was no recovering short of a reinstall via "archive and install". All that worked great, but now Mail doesn't recognize the accounts, mailboxes, signatures, etc. that are still located in the user/library/mail folder.
What's up with that? I can't figure out how to relink Mail to this stuff.
Here's more detail:
1) After lots of prior debugging (Disk Utility, Disk Warrior, Apple Hardware Test, single-user commands per Apple tech notes), I did the A&I to 10.3.4 from the original disks.
2) Per Dr. Smoke and The X Lab, I ran the 10.3.9 combo installer right away so that the "older" system would not get confused by the "newer" stuff in the Previous Systems folder.
3) I Launched Mail and it started anew, i.e. didn't recognize accounts and wanted to start over.
Thanks for any help.

The account settings are stored in HOME/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. It looks like that file became corrupt -- maybe its permissions went awry (Disk Utility cannot fix that) and Mail just deleted the file to create a new one.
If your friend doesn't have a backup copy of that file, just set up the accounts from scratch all over again. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don't. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in HOME/Library/Mail/ when done.
You'll also have to re-configure most settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it's enabled.

Archiving and accessing old mail

As I have upgraded Macs over the years I have always taken my full Mail with me each time.    I just got a new MacBook Retina 15" and am about to go through the migration process, but my mail database goes back to 2004 (when I switched from Entourage) and has about 50,000 messages in it, so I think it might be time to start over with a clean slate.    I would still like occasional access to my old mail, however.
The only option I can think of to achive this dual acess would be to migrate my current mail to a new "Old Mail" User account on my Macbok and login to that user account as needed to access the old mail.   I hate to take up the space for an entirely new user account just for a mail archive though.
So my question:   Is there any better method of archiving old mail than what I describe above?      Any other long term mail archive strategies I should be considering (aside from regular backups with Time Machine which I already do)?
Alternatively, if someone can tell me that 50k messages and close to 10 years of mail doesn't slow Mail down I suppose I can abandon the clean slate approach all together, but it just seems like it's time to start over.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
-Lewis

The items that get placed into the Mail Downloads folder are redundant to what is stored with the message. In Mail Preferences/General there is an option about when to remove them, if unedited. The Mail Downloads folder is meant to be a temporary location for files that you might edit and send back to someone.
If attachments need to be Saved for long term, you should briefly hold while clicking on the Save button in the message headers, and then you will have the option to choose where to store them.
It is probably easiest to cause messages you want to Archive to get moved to a separate mailbox, and then use the command to Archive, and then remove either that mailbox, or all the messages in it collectively. The resultant of the Archive command is a file in a format that will import to older versions of Mail, and to other email apps, and not just into the current version of Mail.
Ernie

Can anyone explain why some of my mail goes straight into Archive and doesn't show up in my Mail Inbox?

I don't understand the Archive folder. My Mail Inbox receives mail for my Mac, Gmail & AOL accounts - but sometimes after I've read an email I then can't find it when I check back for it later. And then I discover it's in the Archive folder, though I haven't done anything to make it move to Archive. So it must be happening automatically, and seemingly at random. Can anyone explain how this could be and how I can prevent it continuing to happen? Thanks.

Andy, thanks for your reply. I was just going to post that I seem to have solved the problem.
What I ended up doing was to first back up the mail folder. Then I created some Saved Mail folders and did a search to find the e-mails that weren't displaying and put them into a saved mail folder. Then I went in and deleted the e-mail account that wasn't displaying mail. (It would show the number of new messages in the red circle, but didn't show any messages being in the inbox when you clicked on the account.) Anyway, after trying to backup everything and deleting the problem e-mail account, I rebuilt the inbox and then re-entered the information for that account to set it back up. After I did this, messages come into the account just fine and show up just like they should.
The file structure looked to be the same as what your finder image shows. When I did the search which let me find the messages, all I noted was that it would say they were either in the Inbox, Sent Mail, Trash, etc. But, once I had them showing in the search window, I could copy them to a saved mail folder and view them without a problem.
Since this wasn't my computer, I'm not sure if anyone tried to change account settings, but not as far as I know. They just said it happened about 2-3 weeks ago.
Thank you for your help. I guess it's going to be one of those computer things that you don't know why it happened, but at least I know what I did that seems to have fixed it.

Duplicate mailboxes and deleted mail archive

So after installing the latest Mac security update, Security Update 2006-007 PowerPC (no idea if this is related to the problem or not), Mail 2.1 was not able to receive messages from my POP earthlink account, even though I could check it through my browser, so the internet connection was not the problem. Everything looked the same in the Mail preferences, so I decided to run Earthlink Total Access and use it to 'set up Mail for my account' in case anything had changed that I wouldn't know about. It said Mail was already configured for the account and when I relaunched Mail there were now two listings of my same email account - one with all my old messages and one that was 'new' and empty and both now received a new email at the same time. Naturally, I found it displeasing to have two copies of one account showing, so I tried to delete the new copy. I can't remember if I tried to delete this duplicate mailbox through the preferences or by right-clicking on it in the left hand column. Anyway, both boxes are still there and they still work, but all my old messages are gone - except for sent messages. Mail still lists all the subject lines, but instead of the actual contents, clicking on them shows this message:
"The message from ____ <________@________.com> concerning “___” has not been downloaded from the server. You need to take this account online in order to download it."
I hope there's a backup copy somewhere of these messages. [I already ran FileSalvage and it did not turn up any.] Oh, they don't show up in Spotlight anymore, either. If Mail itself doesn't keep an archive, is there a way to look at recently trashed items on the hard drive and recover them? I suppose I'll need to do this before I write new data to the disk, so please respond quickly. [Maybe I overwrote them when I downloaded FileSalvage....]
OK, so accepting that all the old emails are gone forever, I still have these very important questions about the application:
How do I re-download the emails that are still on the server? I have emails going back to Nov. 9th that I can access through a browser, but I'd like to at least get those onto my HD.
Also, I can't save any changes to either copy of the same account because I get a message that says I already have an account with the same name. I still need to delete that stupid duplicate, but I'm afraid to mess with it until I know for sure that there's no way to get my emails back. Right now one mailbox preference window says it deletes downloaded messages after one week and another says it deletes after one month, but I don't want anything deleted from the server, but I can't change the settings, as noted.
Can I automatically backup my emails to a more secure location or change Mail to not erase things so easily?

The other messages are lost, then. If you don’t have a backup and FileSalvage cannot recover them, you’re left with whatever remains at the server. Unless you want to continue trying to recover deleted *.emlx files, proceed as follows.
For POP accounts, Mail uses a file within the account folder to keep track of which messages have already been downloaded. Deleting that file causes Mail to treat everything still on the server as if new and try to download it again:
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Mail/POP-username@mailserver/.
3. Locate one or two files named MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded and move them to the Trash. Mail 1.x used MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded to keep track of which messages had already been downloaded. Mail 2.x uses MessageUidsAlreadyDownloaded2 for the same purpose.
Before opening Mail again, re-create the preferences file to get rid of the duplicate account settings without also deleting the account folder (ignore step 1, I’m just copying & pasting here):
1. Quit Mail if it’s running.
2. Make a backup copy of the ~/Library/Mail folder, just in case something else goes wrong while trying to solve the problem. You can do this in the Finder by dragging the folder to the Desktop while holding the Option (Alt) key down, for example. This is where all your mail is stored.
3. In the Finder, go to ~/Library/Preferences/. Locate com.apple.mail.plist and move it to the Desktop (to be deleted after fixing the problem).
4. Open Mail. You’ll have to set up your non-.Mac accounts from scratch all over again. If given the option to import existing mailboxes or something like that, don’t. Just enter the account information and Mail will automagically rediscover the data in ~/Library/Mail/ when done.
You’ll also have to re-configure most of your settings in Mail > Preferences. For spam-related security reasons, the first thing you should do is go to Preferences > Viewing and disable Display remote images in HTML messages if it’s enabled.
5. As a side effect of re-creating com.apple.mail.plist, Mail might rename Outbox (which is where messages waiting to be sent are stored) to Delivered. The name of that mailbox is actually a misnomer, as it would contain messages (if any) that couldn’t be delivered for some reason. You can delete that mailbox if you wish.

Recover mail after archive and install

Hey there good mac people,
I recently archived and installed on my ibook g4. It was successful, my problem is that I forgot to backup all the mail I had in my osx mail app.
The previous system folder (library<mail<mail accounts<com.mac.mailaccounts<English.lproj< file, but I don't know if this will help restore or not?
Some of the mail is still on the server, but it is set to delete from the server once a week, and thus only a weeks worth at best is still on the server.
Does anybody have any suggestions?
In the future, what's the best way to back up mail?

Hello art-is-work.
I don't understand your problem. Archive and Install should have preserved all your data, unless you told it to do otherwise. Did you?
Mail stores most preferences and all account settings in ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist. Everything else, including all your messages and mailboxes, is stored within the ~/Library/Mail/ folder.
If the problem is that you told the installer to not Preserve Users and Network Settings, then Archive and Install should still have saved a copy of your entire home folder in /Previous Systems/Previous System N/Users/, where N is a number. The old Mail folder and preferences file should be there. You can just copy them to the appropriate location of your current home folder, or follow the somewhat convoluted procedure described in the following article to safely restore them:
How to get files from a previous home directory after Archive and Install (Mac OS X)
Note: For those not familiarized with the ~/ notation, it refers to the user's home folder.

Missing mail after "archive and install"

Hello,
I went to talk to the folks at the "genius bar" today because my powerbook fan has been blazing like crazy. I had OS 10.4 on my computer, which I had installed from an upgrade about a year ago. I bought the computer a few months before that, when it still shipped with OS 10.3. So the guy at the mac store told me to re-install the system using the archive and install feature and the original install disks. He told me to re-install 10.3, which came with the computer, and then to run the upgrade that I have to get it back to 10.4.
I am having some problems. I have reinstalled X.3 and find that when I open the Mail application, all of my messages of the last year are gone. I can't find them anywhere. But everything else on the computer seems untouched...all of my documents, and even old emails from before I made the upgrade to 10.4, one year ago.
I am afraid that if I do anything else, like install 10.4 that I will lose any chance of recovering these files. Does anybody have any advice on where I can recover the emails from my inbox and other folders? The guy at the apple store assured me that everything would be saved by clicking the "preserve users and network settings" option in the re-install program.
Or will everything show up again when I re-install 10.4? I was holding off on doing this because I wanted to see if the fan would run less using the older system, as someone suggested that I try this. I also tried to "import" the inbox in the library/mail folder, but this only imported all of the messages that I already have...not the lost ones.
thanks for any advice!
colin

Did the folks or this person at the "genius bar" also recommend that you create or update your backup before performing an Archive & Install?
If not, a "genius" he ain't.
The mbox filing structure used with Tiger Mail is significantly different than the mbox filing structure used with previous Mail.app versions under Jaguar and Panther.
Tiger Mail stores each message contained in a mailbox as a separate file in .emix format located within the Messages folder for the mailbox. Although you can import Jaguar and Panther mailboxes to Tiger, the mbox format used with Tiger Mail is not backwards compatible or interchangeable with Jaguar or Panther Mail without taking an additional step first. The reason you are seeing the old messages available before and up until the time you upgraded to Tiger is because you didn't delete the left over content package files used by Panther Mail and one of these files contains all messages messages and message attachments which are not automatically deleted after the conversion process to the mbox format used with Tiger Mail is completed.
Using the Finder, go to Home > Library > Mail > this POP account named folder (named by the user name and incoming mail server for the account). Within the account named folder is there an INBOX.mbox file and/or an INBOX.mbox named folder and the same for the other mailboxes (mboxes) within the account named folder?
Tiger Mail.app mboxes at the Finder level are folders and each folder contains a Messages folder which stores each message contained in the mailbox as a separate file in .emix format.
Jaguar and Panther Mail.app mboxes are .mbox files only, not a folder.

Updated maverick and all my mail archives disappeared on gmail

Please help, I recently updated maverick and all my mail archives disappeared on gmail. I would apprecaite any advice on how to fix it. I have three gmail accounts two for my business and one personal and all three inculde important data.

I saw one other user that had the same issue. Messages were gone in Mail and on Gmail server. If you do not have backup, your data is gone. It's unclear if this is a Mail or Gmail's server at fault.
Let's first check manually to see if your data is still on your Mac.
Go to your User's Library.
Scrol to Mail folder
Inside V2 folder look for IMAP-YOUR [email protected]
Look for All Mail.mbox in [Gmail].mbox
Drill down to see if there any actual messages

Archive and Install Mail Problem...could somebody please advise?

Hello,
I went to the "genius bar" today because my powerbook fan has been blazing like crazy. I had OS 10.4 on my computer, which I had installed from an upgrade about a year ago. I bought the computer a few months before and when it shipped with 10.3. So the guy at the mac store told me to re-install the system using the archive and install feature. He told me to re-install 10.3, which came with the computer, and then to run the upgrade that I have to get it back to 10.4.
I am having some problems. I have reinstalled X.3 and find that when I open the Mail application, all of my messages of the last year are gone. I can't find them anywhere. The most recent message is from May '05, when I upgraded from 10.3 to 10.4. I am afraid that if I do anything else, like install 10.4 that I will lose any chance of recovering these files. Does anybody have any advice on where I can recover the emails from my inbox and other folders? I will be very angry if they are gone for good, because the guy at the apple store assured me that everything would be saved by clicking the "preserve users and network settings" option in the re-install program. Furthermore, lots of older emails (pre-'05) have been saved, so it seems like the newer ones should be too. Or will they only show up when I re-install 10.4? I was holding off on doing this because I wanted to see if the fan would run less using the older system.
thanks for any advice!
colin

cdingler:
When you Archive and Install all your info is saved in a Previous Systems Folder. You cannot boot from this folder, but you should find your data and prefs there. Check out this article: Archive and Install.
Try this: Go to the Previous Systems Folder and to the User's Library. When you open the Library Folder, go to Mail. All your stuff should be in there.
PS: Never do any major procedure such as installation, erase and install, archive and install without a good backup of everything you can't afford to lose.
Good luck.
cornelius

Mail Archive and Backup

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