User profile for user: marshmallow49
marshmallow49 Author
User level: Level 1
13 points

Moving Mojave Apple Mail mboxes back to High Sierra

I have a Mac Pro and 3 laptops located in different residences. The Mac Pro Tower (cheesegrater) is running High Sierra and the laptops running Mojave. I've been using Outlook for Mac as my mail client and able to copy/paste the data bases between the computers to keep all my mail folders updates when I go or return from a location. Lately, I've upgraded my SSD drives from 1TB to 2TB. When I did this, Microsoft wanted me to validate the license agreement. Unfortunately, there system doesn't work causing all kinds of headaches.


I decided to move everything over to Apple mail and say goodbye to Microsoft's horrible licensing system. I did all the work on my laptop running Mojave. It was a lot of converting, exporting and importing mbox folders. It took me a couple days to get it perfect. Unfortunately, when I returned home to my Mac Pro running High Sierra, the Mail databases are not compatible between the different OS versions, since High Sierra has a V5 file and Mojave has V6 database. Trying to rename the folder or copy paste the files into V5 did not work. The only thing I could do, to somewhat save the day, was export Mojave's database's mbox folders and re-import them into High Sierra's Mail. This worked for most everything, but will require me to set up all the accounts again and move and relabel all the folders in the side bar. While still a lot of work, at least the folders and emails are there.


I'm sure others are having this issue that have a laptop for portability and a desktop at home. This is quite a hassle trying to keep things synced in different computers. Once I get the Mac Pro Tower reconfigured perfectly, I'm going to use my SuperDuper app to clone all the laptops back to High Sierra, so versions of everything will be the same and I can simply reverse clone the machines back and forth when I travel and return, not worrying about version numbers and licensing problems. I would have preferred to move the Mac Pro Tower to Mojave, but as many of cheesegrater tower owners know, nVidia and Apple are not cooperating and nVidia can't post the Mojave drivers for their cards for Mac OS, so we are stuck with High Sierra as long as we still want to use CUDA processing on our Adobe Graphics applications.


Truthfully, there's not much difference between High Sierra and Mojave, other than NEWS and Dark Mode, both which I can do without.


Anyone have any other creative solutions to this problem, please reply.


Thank you

Posted on Sep 2, 2024 11:22 AM

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User profile for user: g_wolfman
g_wolfman
User level: Level 4
3,502 points

Sep 2, 2024 12:05 PM in response to marshmallow49

I feel as though I am missing something here...are you using POP mail for some reason or actually working offline? If using IMAP (and even moreso Apple Mail or Exchange) the authoritative source for the emails is the server and if you log into the account from a new mail client it will download the folder structures and emails from the server.


I don't quite comprehend why you were manually copying the databases in the first place on Outlook. Even if not using Internet while travelling, the server should sync as soon as you are back and connected to the Internet.


Not sure how to offer any other possible solutions given that.

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User profile for user: marshmallow49
marshmallow49 Author
User level: Level 1
13 points

Sep 3, 2024 2:48 PM in response to g_wolfman

I'm using iMap mail. While this synchronizes my emails, it doesn't synchronize my folders in either Outlook for Mac or Apple Mail. This requires changing OLM files to mBox, so Apple mail can read them and export/import them over. Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2019 requires a license update everytime I clone or change hard drives. Given what I shared above, this turns out to be a headache, especially when Microsoft's online update/renewal licensing system doesn't work and gives one error messages and no human to talk to to figure out why. Welcome AI tech support. LOL


I've got everything working now and transferred over to the Mac Pro cheesegrater running High Sierra. Googles App Password was required to get all my email accounts online, since High Sierra and below now require it to access their server. This was a hassle in itself until I realized the email that I was getting the custom App Password for required me to be logged into Chrome on that same account. I have 7 emails I use for various purposes.


Now I just need to clone my working Mac Pro tower running HS to all my laptops and to each other; a much easier way to keep my computers all in sync. I won't really miss Mojave that much. I liked their NEWS app but I get that on my phone and web, besides news is becoming less a part of my life.


Thanks for your response.

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User profile for user: g_wolfman
g_wolfman
User level: Level 4
3,502 points

Sep 3, 2024 4:43 PM in response to marshmallow49

Huh, OK. Well, I stopped using folders and went to flags a few years ago (but only for iCloud, since Apple flags and Outlook Categories aren't compatible). But I don't ever recall having an issue keeping folders synchronized between my Apple Mail client and Outlook...I do recall a bunch of Outlook "folders" like Notes and Conversations showing up in Mail despite my best efforts to hide them (Outlook being a full office comms platform and not just email, it is a bit...extra...in my opinion). But folder and mail sync was a breeze.


But I do believe I set up Outlook in Mail using the built in EWS support, not IMAP, so not sure what else to suggest for your situation.

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Moving Mojave Apple Mail mboxes back to High Sierra

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