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I have a few "on my mac" storage folders for archived email, but I can't find where they're stored on my Mac. Older answers to this query point to Go/Library/Mail, but in there I find only older V4 Mailboxes (current V16); and in any case, only .plist files.
Where does Ventura or other newer OS store the Mailboxes and their contents?
[Re-Titled by Moderator]
MacBook Pro 13″, macOS 13.4
canoncito wrote:
You can always reinstall/refresh the baked in applications, including the Mail.app by rei-installing the macOS on top of your existing macOS...
ref: How to reinstall macOS - Apple Support
canoncito wrote:
I have a few "on my mac" storage folders for archived email, but I can't find where they're stored on my Mac. Older answers to this query point to Go/Library/Mail, but in there I find only older V4 Mailboxes (current V16); and in any case, only .plist files.
Where does Ventura or other newer OS store the Mailboxes and their contents?
From your Finder>Go>Go To Folder, copy and paste:
~/Library/Mail/
the Ventura mail is the V10 folder:
~/Library/Mail/V10
It begs the question why are you trying to access your "On Your Mac" folders through the Finder, typically you use the Mail.app sidebar...?
If you do not see the content of "On Your Mac" move the mouse to the right side to reveal the carrot and spin it open with a single click:
Yes the current version of macOS is 13.4 (22F66)
yes the current version of the Mail.app is Version 16.0 (3731.600.7)
Thanks for the reply. The only folder in the /Mail folder is V4, which contains mail files (mostly .plist) from older email addresses, circa 2017-2020. No results from /Mail/V10.
I moved from business emails to a couple personal emails a few years back, and those aren't showing.
As to why: yes, I'm being especially cautious, wanting to be sure I don't lose archived emails as I change mail servers on the same email address (new web host for that personal domain). Thus I moved them to an On My Mac folder, rather than the server-side IMAP folder where they've been living. I just wanted to know how to open them locally, outside of Mail, in case once I'm up again with my new mail server, they either don't open right in Mail (snafu with same email address and different server), or -- worst case scenario -- Mail crashes or corrupts somehow. So I wanted to see where they live and how are named/open up locally....and can't find that folder.
(Ideally, once I'm up with my new server, I can move them into the new Archives folder for my main personal email address on the IMAP server...or, I may just let these old one live separately in the On My Mac section of Mail.)
If you have input on any of that, I'd be most grateful.
(site note: I see that I can drag emails from Mail's "On My Mac" folder, into a Finder folder, where they show as .eml files with names matching Subject Lines. That's a good workaround. But I'd like to find the On My Mac folders in the Library!)
Again, many thanks.
Jim
I don’t think anyone can possibly explain how you seem to have a working Mail program, but you don’t have a V10 folder.
V4 was from six OS versions ago. It shouldn’t even be there. The V10 folder should be in ~/Library/Mail and Mail would be unable to display anything if it was missing.
You won’t find it anywhere else.
Odd! And yes Mail seems to be working fine, with several IMAP accounts to check, and synced between my Mac and iOS devices via iCloud… (this new kind-of back up archive folder is the first one that’s storing anything “on my Mac”)
So I suppose I may want to secure the relatively few emails that I’ve archived that I really care about (e.g. put them in a desktop folder as I mentioned above), then either rebuild or reinstall Mail, eh?
Is there an option to rebuild the mail database somewhere? Or is a reinstall the best approach? If I do a re-install, is there a need to do any particular uninstall, or deletion of these old files before I do that? Or can I simply trash the mail program and this V4 folder, then re-download Mail?
Thanks, all.
canoncito wrote:
Odd! And yes Mail seems to be working fine, with several IMAP accounts to check, and synced between my Mac and iOS devices via iCloud… (this new kind-of back up archive folder is the first one that’s storing anything “on my Mac”)
I don't know what "new kind-of backup" you are describing unless it is the Archive folder. Where it stores messages is dependent on the setting in Mailbox Behaviors. It is not a backup.
Is there an option to rebuild the mail database somewhere?
Mailbox menu > Rebuild.
Or is a reinstall the best approach?
Reinstall of what? Reinstalling anything as the term is used will not affect your data (email messages) at all.
then re-download Mail?
You can't download Mail. Even if you could, it would not alter your data.
FWIW, Barney is correct. The V4 folder would have been in macOS 10.12 Sierra. I don't get it either.
I would use a program like Mailsteward or MailbackupX which will do backups automatically and then you will not have to worry about losing any emails in the future.
Where does Mail store On My Mac mailboxes in macOS Ventura
