How to export mailbox to import on different Mac (Mail > Mail)
I have two Macs, laptop and desktop. I would like to import the Inbox from the laptop to the desktop, my main machine. How do I export, save or copy a mailbox? In Help it mentions how to save individual messages, but makes no mention of exporting a whole mailbox. (There is a page on copying, moving and deleting, but this is not exporting - dragging the Inbox to the desktop does not work).
There is nothing under File or anywhere about exporting. There is an option to "Import Mailboxes".
If you only want to export/import single mailboxes (sounds like this is the case) it's as easy as right-clicking the desired mailbox in Mail and selecting "Archive". This will export to mbox format which can easily be imported on your other Mac by choosing Import/Mail for Mac OS X.
Right-clicking the Inbox shows no "Archive" option. I should point out I am on Tiger 10.4.11, I accidently posted in this 10.5 Leopard forum. I don't know if Mail is different between the two.
You're right. That is the reason. Sorry, but I forgot how to do this in 10.4 and don't have a Tiger Mac around right now, but you can always do this:
Copy /Users/<username>/Library/Mail to your other Mac. There select "Import" in Mail's file menu and navigate to the desired folder. The Inbox should be found in a folder called something like "POP-username@providername.com".
If your mail is an IMAP account, you don't have to do anything at all. Just fire up Mail on the new machine, point it to your mail servers, and everything will come in just the way it was on your old machine.
- I don't want to point a new machine to the same mail server, I want to sync (sort of) the Inboxes. I want to import the Inbox from my laptop to my primary machine.
- Will copying over the Library>Mail>pop...username, etc. folder replace the one that's there, or just add its contents?
You should not copy this folder over the existing one, even though that is also possible. Go to Mail's File menu and select "Import". Then choose "Mail for Mac OS X" and when asked for the location, select the POP-xyz folder. Then you will have an "Imported" Mailbox containing your imported stuff. Just drag the content to where you want and delete this mailbox afterwards.