after Lion downgrade SnowLeo mail problems

Mail in Lion converts your mailboxes to a newer format. You won't be able to use the mailboxes from Lion in the version of Mail in Snow Leopard. Do you have backups from before you upgraded to Lion?

Well, out of curiosity, why did you downgrade? Lion has been smooth sailing here, for the most part. I did have some memory problems with Lion when doing things like using Aperture or playing graphically-intense games, but upgrading my RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB put things back in good shape. Many people are using Lion without problems... don't be fooled into thinking that seeing a lot of problem reports in a problem-solving forum really means much!

Anyway, long story short, depending on why you downgraded, you may be able to solve your problems, switch back to Lion and not have any problems with losing messages in Mail.

It sounds like you're making an awful lot of assumptions based on very little information. Any OS update can go wrong through no fault of the update. I think all you'd probably have to do at this point is check your software for compatibility with Lion and then install it again (on top of your now fairly clean Snow Leopard install), and most likely all would go well. But it seems you've got your mind made up, so I wish you good luck getting Mail back in order.

Sorry Thomas, but Lion is indeed a "beta". I've been using Apple computers since the 80's, and this ranks up there with the 5300 laptop fiasco. It's unstable, poo-poos memory, crashes software, drains laptop batteries, overheats them, and sends the fans whistling. This, at least, on many, many MacBooks according to other threads on these forums.

I bought a new laptop prior to the release of Lion, but was sent a Lionized MacBook Pro anyway, which I didn't want. So I did what I have done in the past with relatively little problems, and that's proceed anyway, hoping for the best. I used Lion for two weeks, and sent the bloody MacBook back and bought an older model that runs Snow Leopard.

I have a backup of my email, but only going back, of course, to those two weeks. I'm not impressed. Why in the heck Apple deliberately "sabotages" as recent an OS as Snow Leopard is beyond my comprehension.

This is a bad day for Apple because there are an awful lot of faithful users such as yours truly who feel we got the "Made in China" version of the software. Well, they lost a sale and had to pay for their own computer to be shipped back. Actually two. Because they replaced the first one blaming it on a bad battery. So I fired off two MacBook Pros to Apple today.

Anyway, I apologize for the rant. I'm guessing you aren't running this on a laptop.....

I'm guessing you aren't running this on a laptop.....

Actually, I am. Smooth as silk. As it is for many other people.

I've had this conversation so many times over the years, it grows tiring.

"Lion is not a beta, it works fine for many people."

"Snow Leopard is not a beta, it works fine for many people."

"Leopard is not a beta, it works fine for many people."

"Tiger is not a beta, it works fine for many people."

And so on, ad nauseum. It's like this around here every single time there's even a .1 update. So, you're having problems, and you see others reporting problems, so you assume it's a problem with the update. And, judging from history, there's really nothing I can say to convince you otherwise. Sometimes, people would rather apportion blame than fix their problems. So I'll shut up now.

Thomas,

There's no need to take this personal—were not talking about the freckles on your child's face or about your own company (unless you actually have stock!) :-)

I think you missed the whole point above. It's subtle, but here it is again: "beta" not beta. The quotation marks denote the point. For many users (see this thread: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3194235?answerId=15996447022#15996447022 ), Lion has evidently not been amply tested on a laptop. Yours is running smooth as silk? Great. Your configuration of software/hardware and what you actually use may be just fine.

However, there is absolutely no question that it affects laptops from an empirical standpoint. I bought a brand new MBP 2011 (July) with Lion, and a new MBP 2011 (February), and ran them side by side this week with the exact same software, everything. The Lion MPB had four hours less battery power. But that was only after the hard drive was wiped and Lion reinstalled. It was 6 hours less battery life before then!

Something's wrong, Thomas. It's not a matter of hating on Apple or ranting for the sake of ranting. To reduce those of us who see genuine anomalies to being complainers who can' be "convinced otherwise" is condescending and a bit narrow in itself. Your blind faith in Apple is, I'm sure, touching to them. But my loyalty is to my family, not to spending endless hours troubleshooting their computers. :-)

I've updated their OS's for years and can never remember having so many freezes, crashes, and kernel errors, etc. In fact, I've had next to no problems, and so was expecting much the same when I started to use Lion. I would most certainly chalk these issues up to being something on my end, my software, etc.... but when I read dozens of threads from users all over the spectrum experiencing the same thing, and starting to downgrade, that says to me that this wonderful release of the world's most advanced operating system.... was not fully tested, whether by Apple or by third party software. But it sure seems there is something wonky on the Apple side because I'm really not running other software other than Safari, Mail, and FCP.

I wouldn't touch Windows with a 10 foot pole. I think Apple is a great (over-priced) platform, innovative, blah, blah, blah. But they have also dropped the ball at certain moments in the past, and this may very well be one of them.

Will I upgrade to Lion? Of course. You have to, because Apple leaves your software in the dust if you don't. But not until I see these concerning threads resolved.

Not taking anything personally, just weary. I've seen the same pattern time and time again. People see topics about things that are going wrong for them, all timed around a system update, and assume there's a bug. Some of them say it's a bug, like they know (but really they don't), and it snowballs. Admittedly, sometimes it's a bug... but more often, it's not. This has nothing to do with blind faith, just years of experience in these and other forums. And an understanding of why your "empirical test" is not valid as a means of identifying the source of the problem.

So, you've got two choices. You can blame it on Apple and sit on your hands, waiting for a fix. Or you can start troubleshooting, and quite possibly get yourself a solution now. I recommend troubleshooting, but ultimately, it's your choice who to believe.

Thomas A Reed wrote:

So, you've got two choices. You can blame it on Apple and sit on your hands, waiting for a fix. Or you can start troubleshooting, and quite possibly get yourself a solution now. I recommend troubleshooting, but ultimately, it's your choice who to believe.

Actually you are wrong, I have also been a user since the first MacPlus (64Kb internal memory)!

Installed it lion on all our macs, after experiencing a smooth upgrade, and longer battery life on my 17'' (late 2007).

Then installed it on my wife's 15'' Macbook Pro (early 2008). In one word disaster, crashes within 5 minutes, no recovery, absolutely became a worthless machine. Rebulding directories, permissions etc, five minutes later it crashed again. While SL was running perfectly. Just downgraded this machine and also couldn't get her old mails back. (BUT SL is running smoothly no crashes for 6 hours!)

This is a bummer for sure, and no, this machine really doesnot function with lion. And as I figured, it is faulty NVIDIA drivers in combination with kernal panics. This is not a sporadic experience, and yes there are smooth upgrades (my own laptop is one of them), but just browse the internet and a lot of users who suddenly have a no working machine anymore, also faily new computers at that. So here Apple really blundered.

The first big software release without Steve J. I hope it is not a foreboding......

I'm in the same predicament after downgrading to Snow Leopard. I had HUGE problems with Lion. Mail hardly worked at all and several components of the System Preferences wouldn't work either (iCloud and Print & Scan were two). It rendered all my finances in Quicken completely useless and I haven't been able to find a comparable replacement. I leave my computer on 24/7 as I also use it with PhoneValet as an answering machine (another thing it rendered useless) and I was constantly having to restart as it would just bog down until system memory was next to nil.

Now I'm realizing from this post that I've now probably lost access to all my old emails. I've been trying for hours to get SL Mail to recognize my emails. It imports the folders, but there are no emails. I tried using outlook, but it won't let me specify where to import from and just imports the empty mailboxes from Mail.

I think it's unconscionable that there wouldn't be stringent warnings that if you decide to go back after installing Lion, there would be dire consequences. I used it (and gave it the benefit of the doubt) just long enough that all my backups are Lion backups.

Hi everyone,

I was able to import my Apple Mail after downgrading from Lion to Snow Leopard.

Here is what I did:

- In Mail, click Mailbox > New Mailbox.

- in the New Mailbox dialog box, select "On My Mac" as the location and give it any "MailboxName" you want. Click OK.

- Now in Finder, open Library > Mail > Mailboxes > MailboxName.mbox. In the MailboxName.mbox folder (where MailboxName is whatever name you gave the mailbox), all you'll see is an info.plist file. Add a folder called "Messages".

- Go to the location where you've backed up all of your email from Lion and drill down to the Messages folder where you have all your .emlx files. Copy all of these .emlx files and paste them into the new Messages folder you've created (i.e., at the Library > Mail > Mailboxes > MailboxName.mbox > Messages location).

- Go back to Mail. If you open the new "MailboxName" folder under "ON MY MAC", you'll see that it is still empty. Snow Leopard Mail can't read the .emlx files from Lion Mail. But we're not done yet. There are some more steps.

- On the Mail File menu, click Import Mailboxes.

- Select Apple Mail and click Continue.

- Browse to Library > Mail > Mailboxes, select "MailboxName.mbox", click Choose, and then click Done.

- Snow Leopard Mail will now import Lion Mail. It creates an "Import" folder in Mail under "ON MY MAC". Expand the Import folder and you'll see a a folder with the "MailboxName" you selected. When you open this you'll see all of your mail items that came from Lion Mail.

- You can repeat the above for each mailbox you want to import.

Hi all,

I think I found another simple way to import your E-mails from Lion after downgrading to Snow Leopard. However, it requires some action before you downgrade. It's really quite simple: Instead of making backups of the Lion mail files from your Library, first export your mailboxes, one by one:

Select the folder you want to export directly in Apple Mail (I'm using the "old" interface, so these boxes should be on the left of the window.)

Then click on the little cog wheel icon in the lower left corner and select "Export Mailboxes"

Chose the destination of your choice

Repeat with all mailboxes you want to backup

Now you are safe to downgrade – I just erased the whole volume and made a complete new install ...

When you first use Apple Mail on the freshly installed Snow Leopard system, you will be asked if you want to import mailboxes

I selected NOT the "Apple Mail" format BUT "data in the mbox format" (or something like that – I'm running a German system so I don't know what exactly it says in English)

Start importing

Give the mailbox an appropriate name

Repeat with all other mboxes

It worked fine for me but no guarantees ... good luck!

Tilman

Great information, thanks

DougKW wrote:

Hi everyone,

I was able to import my Apple Mail after downgrading from Lion to Snow Leopard.

Here is what I did:

- In Mail, click Mailbox > New Mailbox.

- in the New Mailbox dialog box, select "On My Mac" as the location and give it any "MailboxName" you want. Click OK.

- Now in Finder, open Library > Mail > Mailboxes > MailboxName.mbox. In the MailboxName.mbox folder (where MailboxName is whatever name you gave the mailbox), all you'll see is an info.plist file. Add a folder called "Messages".

- Go to the location where you've backed up all of your email from Lion and drill down to the Messages folder where you have all your .emlx files. Copy all of these .emlx files and paste them into the new Messages folder you've created (i.e., at the Library > Mail > Mailboxes > MailboxName.mbox > Messages location).

- Go back to Mail. If you open the new "MailboxName" folder under "ON MY MAC", you'll see that it is still empty. Snow Leopard Mail can't read the .emlx files from Lion Mail. But we're not done yet. There are some more steps.

- On the Mail File menu, click Import Mailboxes.

- Select Apple Mail and click Continue.

- Browse to Library > Mail > Mailboxes, select "MailboxName.mbox", click Choose, and then click Done.

- Snow Leopard Mail will now import Lion Mail. It creates an "Import" folder in Mail under "ON MY MAC". Expand the Import folder and you'll see a a folder with the "MailboxName" you selected. When you open this you'll see all of your mail items that came from Lion Mail.

- You can repeat the above for each mailbox you want to import.

This works perfectly!!! Thanks a lot.