beeloo

Q: Restore Yosemite emails into El Capitan

Hi,

 

In order to change Mac and to migrate from Yosemite 10.10.5 to El Capitan 10.11, I'm trying to restore all the emails I had in Mail.app on Yosemite, especially the "On my Mac" mailboxes.

 

After quitting Mail.app, I copied the ~/Library/Mail folder which contains the Mailboxes folder containing all my "On my Mac" .mboxes.

I also copied the ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.pli st file

 

Then I relaunched Mail.app but it does't load my previous mailboxes...

 

Since it's not the same Mac, I don't have any Time Machine available to restore directly from Mail.

I only can copy the files and folders from the previous Mac through the network.

 

How to solve this issue ?

 

Any help would be much appreciated !

 

Thank you in advance

Mac mini, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 5, 2015 10:26 PM

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Q: Restore Yosemite emails into El Capitan

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  • Helpful answers

  • by brenden dv,

    brenden dv brenden dv Oct 6, 2015 6:53 AM in response to beeloo
    Community Specialists
    Oct 6, 2015 6:53 AM in response to beeloo

    Hi beeloo,

     

    Sorry to hear you are running into some difficulties in your migration to your new machine. If you are trying to transfer your local Mail mailboxes and you still have access to the original machine, the easiest way may be to simply export the mailboxes in question, as outlined in the following article:

     

    Mail (Yosemite): Import or export mailboxes

     

    Cheers 

  • by beeloo,

    beeloo beeloo Oct 6, 2015 7:22 AM in response to brenden dv
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Oct 6, 2015 7:22 AM in response to brenden dv

    Hi brenden dv

     

    I already tried to export all my "On my Mac" mailboxes one shot but the total amount of generated files is 12 MB, instead of 813 MB... and it fails to import into El Capitan.

     

    If I try to export a mailbox containing some others it doesn't export them.

     

    Any other solution ?

     

    Cheers

  • by brenden dv,

    brenden dv brenden dv Oct 14, 2015 6:29 AM in response to beeloo
    Community Specialists
    Oct 14, 2015 6:29 AM in response to beeloo

    Hi beeloo,

     

    Thank you for using the Apple Support Community. Given the nature of the issues you are describing and your current configuration, you may be better served by reaching out to one of Apple's other available resources for more direct assistance - https://getsupport.apple.com/GetproductgroupList.action

     

    Regards

  • by apple_mikey,

    apple_mikey apple_mikey Nov 6, 2015 12:55 AM in response to brenden dv
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Nov 6, 2015 12:55 AM in response to brenden dv

    This is tricky, but I just figured it out. I'm surprised Apple doesn't have good documentation on this. The trick lies in TWO things - migrating both your Apple Mail Items AND the Internet Account Items. Before Yosemite, your email accounts were all contained in the Apple Mail folders. However, now they have been separated so if you JUST manually migrate the Apple Mail stuff, without the Internet Accounts, then Mail will open and you'll just get your a nakedn iCloud Inbox that will start to load your most recent emails. Also, it helps to copy the Keychain folder over so you don't have to re-enter all your passwords (in Mail or other places as well).

     

    These are the files you need to copy over from your user's Library folder:

     

    for Internet Accounts

    .../Accounts (folder)

     

    for Mail

    .../Mail (folder)

    .../Mail Downloads (folder)

    .../Containers/com.apple.mail (folder)

    .../Preferences/com.apple.accounts.plist (file)

    .../Preferences/com.apple.accountsd.plist (file)

    .../Preferences/com.apple.mail-shared.plist (file)

    .../Preferences/com.apple.MailMigratorService.plist (file)

    .../SyncedPreferences/com.apple.mail-com.apple.mail.vipsenders.plist (file)

    .../SyncedPreferences/com.apple.mail.plist (file)

     

    for Keychain

    .../Keychains (folder)

     

    I arrived at this with a fair amount of trial and error. I had backed up my old user folder (all the folders, including the Library folder) with both Time Machine and a manual copy. I played around with these on a separate, dummy user account (so I could delete it and have my nice, pristine, clean install still there once I figured it out). Finally, let me also say - BAD on you Apple for making this so complicated. Email software is one of those things that should remain elegant, even at the architecture level. Quit complicating things.

  • by irnnr,

    irnnr irnnr Nov 14, 2015 8:39 PM in response to apple_mikey
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 14, 2015 8:39 PM in response to apple_mikey

    Thanks so much, this works! Agree, this should be easier!

  • by John keys,

    John keys John keys Nov 18, 2015 12:07 PM in response to apple_mikey
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Nov 18, 2015 12:07 PM in response to apple_mikey

    Thanks - very useful info, which worked perfectly for me!

  • by beeloo,

    beeloo beeloo Nov 18, 2015 12:26 PM in response to brenden dv
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Nov 18, 2015 12:26 PM in response to brenden dv

    Thank you, I called an Apple Advisor who made me import the ~/Library/Mail/V3/Mailboxes folder from my El Capitan updated Yosemite, directly in the other El Capitan Mail.app.

     

    I got my email back.

     

    But, I have some "UID named" mailboxes, like "AZZZZZZB-2B11-46Z8-8F98-76F53BF39C08" or something.

    If I delete them, I lose all my emails while they are in a same level mailbox.

     

    Is this a Mail.app bug ?

  • by apple_mikey,

    apple_mikey apple_mikey Nov 18, 2015 3:10 PM in response to apple_mikey
    Level 1 (10 points)
    Nov 18, 2015 3:10 PM in response to apple_mikey

    UPDATE: If you follow my solution above, you may find that your emails all transfer but that searching is isn't working properly. This is because mail needs to re-index the imported mail folders. To do so, go to .../Library/Mail/V3/MailData/ and delete all files starting with "Envelope index". There are probably 3-5 of them. Then launch mail again and it will start reimporting all your mail all over, but this time, it will build a full index of all your messages as you do so, so the search function works properly (ie: doesn't ignore certain emails or all emails beyond a certain date). Hope this helps.

  • by beeloo,

    beeloo beeloo Dec 7, 2015 1:58 AM in response to beeloo
    Level 1 (1 points)
    Dec 7, 2015 1:58 AM in response to beeloo

    I've lost all my emails...

  • by PilotScott,

    PilotScott PilotScott Dec 30, 2015 8:51 PM in response to apple_mikey
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Dec 30, 2015 8:51 PM in response to apple_mikey

    Thanks apple_mikey for the solution as I am about to try it from my Yosemite MacPro 2008 to my new iMac 27".  Question on the update you posted.  Can we delete these 3 to 5 "Envelope" files prior to the first import attempt so that we don't have to import twice?

  • by ipixel_au,

    ipixel_au ipixel_au Feb 2, 2016 11:11 PM in response to apple_mikey
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Feb 2, 2016 11:11 PM in response to apple_mikey

    Thanks apple_mike for the instructions, unfortunately it didn't work in my case as it was a POP account as well as an iCloud account I was attempting to migrate. I ended up with multiple versions of my iCloud account and my POP account didn't transfer across. Will need to go back to the drawing board myself on this one.

  • by moomin-mama,

    moomin-mama moomin-mama Mar 8, 2016 7:58 AM in response to apple_mikey
    Level 1 (26 points)
    Mar 8, 2016 7:58 AM in response to apple_mikey

    Hi apple_mikey

     

    Thanks for sharing such a thorough fix – seems to have worked for me, with one remaining issue I was able to figure out.

     

    I wanted to blow out the cobwebs and do a clean install on a new machine, after setting up new machines from a time machine backup for 6 years.  Spent all day scratching my head on how to get my mail from the old machine to the new on El Capitan, with all my many folders and sub-folders intact, encountering the same issues as many have, on multiple threads, and you're the only person who has resolved this successfully.

     

    I followed your fix and followup "update" at the same time, before opening mail for the first time.  Two files were not on my old machine – so I couldn't copy onto the new machine – everything seems to be working, so I don't know if this will have an impact.

    .../Preferences/com.apple.MailMigratorService.plist (file)

    .../SyncedPreferences/com.apple.mail.plist (file)

     

    The only issue I was left with is 3 "internet accounts" (all GoDaddy IMAP) that would not accept the correct password.  A reboot didn't fix this, neither did clearing out both caches, which seems to fix a lot of things.  In the end I discovered that while "internet accounts" in general preferences would not accept the password, Mail "accounts" settings WILL accept it, and the password has to go in both the incoming IMAP and outgoing SMTP settings areas.  Done.  Thank you so much!

  • by Leidamu,

    Leidamu Leidamu Sep 29, 2016 10:45 AM in response to apple_mikey
    Level 1 (8 points)
    Mac OS X
    Sep 29, 2016 10:45 AM in response to apple_mikey

    Hello apple_mikey, thank you very much for this article. I'm moving my mail data from one El Captain to another El Captain and your tips above find out to be relevant and very useful (I wonder why apple has not offcilally documented this process ). The problem I however have is that the contents of  the mailboxes "On My Mac" have disappeared. All the mailboxes show up but have no content. I have tried to rebuild them but it does not give anything. I have also removed all the file starting with "Envelope index" in the MailData folder as you have suggested below. I don't know what I did wrong. Any hint?

     

    Thanks.