manually moving mail from snow leopard into mountain lion after old computer died

Question

manually moving mail from snow leopard into mountain lion after old computer died

A week ago, my beloved late 2006 iMac bit the dust when its power supply blew. Its hard drive is now installed in an external USB 3 enclosure.

I now have a new 27 inch iMac, and the external hard drive mounts perfectly.

But for the life of me, I can't get my snow leopard preference file to import into mountain lion.

I created an account manually to see where ML stored its files. I figured I could copy the old preference file over, and then just import the old messages from the external hard drive.

But that won't work. No matter how many times I copy the preference file over, ML only sees the account I created as a test within ML mail.

I really don't want to have to manually re-enter all details, unless that is the only way. Can someone please help me?

Thanks!

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.3)

Posted on May 3, 2013 5:25 PM

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Answer 1

Old Toad

Level 10

207,283 points

May 3, 2013 5:58 PM in response to William Mulloy

Launch Migration Assisstant and use it to select the external HD to migrage to your new iMac. It takes care of everything.

Note: If you have an iPhoto library check it out carefully. Often it gets damaged by Migration Assistant. In those cases it's best to just drag it manually from the EHD to your Pictures folder on the new iMac.

OT

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Answer 2

May 4, 2013 12:55 AM in response to Old Toad

Thanks!

I'm generally afraid to use Migration Assistant, for reasons like what you point out with the iPhoto library. How much will it get right, vs what it will muck up? I wouldn't have known about the iPhoto thing if you hadn't told me.

I have manually upgraded through each release from 10.1 to 10.6. I skipped Lion because I did not have compatible hardware, but it's sad to think I can't find my way around 10.8 for something as supposedly simple as mail.

I was hoping to be able to put my mail in place without Migration Assistant, because I don't want any incompatible Snow Leopard junk ruining my nice, clean Mountain Lion instalL

Plus, I've already created an account with the same short username as on the EHD, so I am not sure if that's going to stop me right there.

And if Migration Assistant DOES muck things up, I don't even know how to reinstall my OS on this thing. I'm old-school. I am still mourning the loss of my restore DVD.

I don't mean this to come out like a rant -- I truly am grateful for your assistance, but the thought of relying upon Migration Assistant petrifies me. Is it really the only way to get Apple Mail up and running?

Thanks,

-Will

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Answer 3

May 4, 2013 9:47 AM in response to William Mulloy

William Mulloy wrote:

but the thought of relying upon Migration Assistant petrifies me. Is it really the only way to get Apple Mail up and running?

Not at all.

I never used Migration Assistant when I moved from one OSX version to another.

You need these two items from Snow Leopard to be up and running with Apple Mail.

~/Library/Mail

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

Also you should never have started Apple Mail in your actual user account. If you did, please use the Guest account or any other temporary user to import old mail archive

Copy from Snow Leopard disk, ~/Library/Mail inside your actual user ~/Library/Mail

Do the same with ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

Start Apple Mail. A message will warn you that your mail archive will be migrated to the new format.

After a while you should see all of your old messages and corresponding accounts. If you used a temporary user such as Guest, copy /Users/guest/Library/Mail to ~/Library/Mail

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Answer 4

May 4, 2013 10:12 AM in response to Alberto Ravasio

Hi Alberto,

Because I opened Apple Mail, is that why it wouldn't work when I placed my files in what I thought was the right location?

And if I use the temporary user approach, won't I have permissions that need changing once I move the imported mail?

Thanks!

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Answer 5

May 4, 2013 10:25 AM in response to William Mulloy

William Mulloy wrote:

Because I opened Apple Mail, is that why it wouldn't work when I placed my files in what I thought was the right location?

Yep.

And if I use the temporary user approach, won't I have permissions that need changing once I move the imported mail?

Nope. Don't move it, but copy the temporary Mail folder. For example on the Public folder or an external disk. Then copy it back on the legitimate user's folder.

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Answer 6

Eric Root

Level 10

684,015 points

May 4, 2013 11:37 AM in response to William Mulloy

Information.

Mail – Transfer Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion

Mail – Transfer Snow Leopard to Mountain Lion (2)

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Answer 7

May 4, 2013 3:05 PM in response to Alberto Ravasio

Well, I started over with a new user.

Copying the preferences file, and the Mail directory, without opening Mail first, worked.

BUT there is a new problem.

All my old mail is there, and while Apple Mail is now pulling in mail, I can't see anything it has brought in. The mail activity section indicates that over 200 messages came in, but they are nowhere to be found. Even the unread counter on the Mail dock icon does not change. And no "new mail" sound plays.

Yet, I can see on the server that the messages were accessed.

If I send myself a test message, I CAN see those messages in the Sent folder. But it won't show me any new mail, even if it has accessed it. I could cry at this point...

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Answer 8

May 4, 2013 3:55 PM in response to Alberto Ravasio

Nevermind! I found a Mail rule that had gone haywire (imported along with everything else), directing those messages (silently) to another folder. Problem solved. Thanks for all the help getting my mail moved over 🙂

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Answer 9

May 17, 2013 5:54 PM in response to William Mulloy

Hi - I am having the same exact problem - driving me totally nuts!!! Can you please share the details on this Mail rule gone haywire?? How can I find this problem and correct it?? Any help appreciated!

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Answer 10

Jul 17, 2013 5:40 AM in response to Alberto Ravasio

Hi Alberto,

If I use the "guest-approach", once the guest account is created succesfully with all old messages etc.. I ONLY need to copy from that directory the /Users/guest/Library/Mail folder; no .plist file?

Thanks, Erik.

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Answer 11

Jul 17, 2013 6:11 AM in response to Erik Keune

Hi Erik.

There is no more

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

in Mountain Lion. So, to answer to your question, yes you just need to copy that folder.

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Answer 12

Jul 17, 2013 6:22 AM in response to Alberto Ravasio

Roberto,

Thanks for making me 100% certain for what to do. Great!

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Answer 13

Abu Suda

Level 1

0 points

Sep 26, 2013 9:55 AM in response to Alberto Ravasio

Dear Alberto,

I have a similar issue but with lion. After copying the said folder and preference file, mail tries to download all my mails again, as a duplicate. It would be great to resolve this issue.

Regards,

Abu Suda

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Answer 14

Dec 20, 2013 10:54 PM in response to Abu Suda

Rather than using Mail, I used to use Eudora. Now I'm stuck with Gmail and the like. Eudora is so nicely straightforward. Inbox, Sent, Saved, and email in every folder I created were each kept in their own single Eudora file. For example, I can go back to 2008 when I used TWC's Road Runner for email, and every single received email of the year is in one file. I can load that file into BBEdit and easily search through the entire year. Attachments are all kept in one folder, for easy saving, deleting, or whatever.

---

William Mulloy, I too am old school. I just installed Mountain Lion on partition #2 of my Mac Pro, but haven't started using it yet. I've been running Snow Leopard since buying this machine in 2010. Last week I went through the convoluted tangle of finding, downloading and installing ML, then creating a partition on a portable hard drive in order to make my own 'Restore' disc in case one day I want to re-install Mountain Lion. I don't like the idea of not having a copy of the OS.

I talked to a support guy and he told me there's a hidden Restore somewhere on the hard drive of all ML installs, but I didn't want to count on that and so made my own. See below if you want to see the details of what I did. If you bought Mountain Lion and do want to create your own copy of the installer, I think you can downlod it any time, and make one.

Now I'm looking around for easy ways to transfer Preference files to my ML partition. I didn't know about Migration Assistant. I'll do it manually if the OS will allow it, but thought I'd look around first.

Greg

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5660768?answerId=24109652022#24109652022&ac_cid=op123456#24109652

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Answer 15

Oct 5, 2014 8:41 PM in response to Alberto Ravasio

Hi Alberto,

My mail in old computer was corrupted - something in settings that apple could not sort out - when I deleted mail, all it did was regenerate the trashed files into my inbox.

I thus do not want to transfer the whole "old" mail to my new iMac in case this problem is transferred. Is there a way I can keep my "old" mail on an EHD and access it as and when? Maybe the "guest" method?

Thanks

Pat

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