How do I bring back Mail settings to a system from a backup?

Question

Level 10

152,777 points

How do I bring back Mail settings to a system from a backup?

Quick background. I have a problem with the Finder behavior where tabs and the top of the screen disappear. The short story is that the problem is somewhere in the user on this system, a 2019 MacBook Pro. I've tried different things to resolve this without success.

The most successful is to manually migrate the user from a backup to a new install. That's worked well. I've got all my content and have reinstalled applications and everything connects. The single remaining problem is Mail (of course). I can bring back all my accounts and messages. The problem is I'm missing my folders and other settings like Rules. I'm missing these folders and others (hopefully not the messages in them).

Does anyone know where this information is stored for Mail? I assume it's somewhere in the user Library, but I haven't been able to find anything I can transfer from the backup that will bring these back.

Thanks very much for any help.

Posted on Mar 3, 2022 9:16 AM

Reply

Answer 1

tbirdvet

Level 6

17,060 points

Mar 3, 2022 5:13 PM in response to Tom Wolsky

You can try to rebuild the mailboxes. Your mail folders are in your ~/library/mail/V9 directory. You will have to work down through the folders until you find the mailbox then copy to your desktop and then import back into mail.

Reply

Answer 2

Tom Wolsky Author

Level 10

152,777 points

Mar 4, 2022 5:26 AM in response to tbirdvet

After much digging I found that the files to recreate Mail are stored in Containers in ~/Library. I could now rebuild my test machine. Thanks for replying and the Mail pointers.

Reply

Answer 3

Tom Wolsky Author

Level 10

152,777 points

Mar 3, 2022 10:56 AM in response to tbirdvet

Thanks. The + creates a new mailbox. The hidden disclosure triangle lets me see the mailboxes inside. So this gets me to the mailboxes, but there's no way in preferences or plists or folders in the user that were saved in the backup to reconstitute this? Do I have to rebuild it manually? This seems strange. There must be something otherwise the application would always open to its default state.

Reply

Answer 4

tbirdvet

Level 6

17,060 points

Mar 3, 2022 10:05 AM in response to Tom Wolsky

To get back your folders you need to hover over the + sign next to your mail id in the left col. Then scroll down the menu to get your folders to show again.

Reply

How do I bring back Mail settings to a system from a backup?

Similar questions