Mail and On My Mac folders

Question

Mail and On My Mac folders

Hello Everyone, this happened to a colleague of mine and I dont want it to do the same to me but I need to carry out the same task. I only have one IMAP mail account in mac mail, the task is to delete this account and reset it up using the new server + settings. when my colleague deleted his account, it also deleted all his "On My Mac" folders and therefore all his saved emails.

Is there a way a can disassociate the "On My Mac" folders from the IMAP account so they stay where they are when I delete the account or do I have to go through and save them all to a separate folder to reintegrate them when the new account is set up?

Macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Mar 19, 2010 2:33 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

Toocool4

Level 2

365 points

Mar 19, 2010 2:55 AM in response to Family Reynolds

You can always go into your user profile Library Mail and copy out the folders of the mail that’s on your Mac ignoring the IMAP folder.

Once you have done that you can then delete and re-create the account. Once all that is done put the folders you copied out back in the mail folder, then you need to delete the Envelope Index file in the mail folder. By deleting the Envelope Index file mail will be forced to re-index all your mail again on the first time you open mail.

Reply

Answer 2

Mar 19, 2010 2:56 AM in response to Family Reynolds

If your account is IMAP then your email folders (ie Inbox, Sent) should be stored on your mail server and not locally within folders in the "On My Mac" section. "On My Mac" folders should on store email if a POP account has been setup. Are you sure that your friends account was not setup as POP?

Reply

Answer 3

Mar 19, 2010 3:02 AM in response to Anton Marcelline

I am using "On My Mac" folders to store locally, email off the main IMAP server, I thought that the "On My Mac" folders were completely separate to the mail account, but it seems they are tied somehow. I am not allowed to create extra folders on the server to filter mail, so I created the "On My Mac' folders for this purpose thinking that being stored locally they were taken off the server and safe.

Reply

Answer 4

Mar 19, 2010 3:58 AM in response to Family Reynolds

So are you manually moving email say from the Inbox on the IMAP account to the Inbox in "On My Mac"?

Also if you are concerned about losing email then you could always duplicate you "Mail" folder located in Mac HD/Users/[your login name]/Library/.

Reply

Answer 5

Mar 19, 2010 4:15 AM in response to Anton Marcelline

Yes, basically I have five folders "On My Mac", when certain mail arrives on the IMAP server I drag them to the relevant folders "On My Mac".

I want to keep all the mail that is in these folders when I delete and re-create the IMAP account on the new server.

Reply

Answer 6

Mar 19, 2010 5:18 AM in response to Family Reynolds

Deleting the IMAP account should not delete email stored within "On My Mac" but to be safe I would backup your "Mail" folder as a precaution.

The path to your "Mail" folder is...

Mac HD/Users/[your login name]/Library/

Reply

Answer 7

Mar 19, 2010 9:40 AM in response to Anton Marcelline

Many Thanks for all your assistance with this, I will back up the folders and re-instate them after the creation of the new IMAP acount

Reply