Q: Downgrading from Lion to 10.6.8?

To all those who encountered the same problem as I did i.e returning the databases of mail, adressbook and ical from lion to SL

if you Exprot the mailbox from Lion's mail and then improt it into SL mail it works fine. you get it in an "imported" folder but rearanging it is no biggy.

I exported all of my mailboxes, just don't forget to export each subfolder seperatly as well as the main folder.

then I too some screen capturs of the way it is organised, I imagin it would take few minutes to reorganise everything,

I also took screen captures of the rules as I didn't noticed if they trasplanted properly or not.

with AB and IC it is even easyer, you just export an archive of each and that is that, in SL the imprt works fine.

I think that exporting your safari bookmarks would be a clever thing to do as well.

how to downgrade without having to back up/reformat the whole disk:

1. Back up (optional, but do so anyway just to be safe)

2. create new partition

3. boot into the 10.6.x install CD

4. install to the new partition

5. all your data is on the other partition, but you can still access/use most if not all the programs you have on lion

therulerofchinaYou're perhaps not understanding what this thread is about...

This thread is about back-installing Snow Leopard when you may not have the (trivial) means to do so. And as this and other threads clearly state, back-installing Snow Leopard may leave you with

a) Time Machine backups that you can't access

b) Preferences that are incompatible with Snow Leopard

c) Files you can't open

Please don't say it's easy - it's possible...

But (and it's a BIIIIIG but) "all your data is on the other partition" is really rather over-optimistic...

I've done it. I'm glad. But implying it's trivial is sadly mistaken, as you'll find when others quiz you about files they can't open. If Lion has been running for a few weeks, lots of files won't open in Snow Leopard....

i never said it was easy.

i never said it was trivial.

i merely offered a solution to get people back on snow leopard without having to format their disk and lose all their data.

it isnt a big but, their data is still in tact... And if there are files that they cant open, or time machine backups they cant use, they can hold the option key while booting and go back to Lion. (handy, but not ideal)

personally i have Snow Leopard, Lion, and Mountain Lion all on my Mac.

Yes the data is accessible on all of them. if i saved my files in one partition, i can open them from another as they are all mounted (apart from the recovery partitions)

as for file compatibility, i can see this is a problem. As for applications, i run older versions that are compatible with Snow Leopard.

i hope my solution helped somebody at least...