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Restoring Mail folders after system re-install : Am I screwed?

Before I wiped my HD and reinstalled, I overlooked archiving Mailboxes from inside Mail - oops. Instead, I backed up everything in Mac Harddrive/Library and System, and also MyIdentity/Library and System files — almost 1 gig of stuff — thinking I could just pop those files back into their respective Library or System folders and be back as before. Included were 20 or so .mbox files in MyIdentity/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/1Folder-To-Restore.mbox. The mailboxes I want to restore were all On My Mac folders.

After re-install, I set up my Mail accounts again, and apparently retrieved most of the 5000+ messages from the past 3 years. But I'd like them sorted back into the 20 or so folders like before.

When trying to Import Mailboxes from the folder where these backed up .mboxes live, I get "Error. No valid mbox files were found."

Then, I put these backed-up .mbox files back in the Library folder where they were before re-install. The folders appear when re-launching Mail - but theyre empty...

Suggestions?

OS 10.5.8 | Mail 3.6 (936)

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Oct 5, 2013 11:37 PM

19 replies

Apr 23, 2014 9:31 AM in response to TheOriginal150mph

Thank Youb BDAqua ! Saved me ! GIGS of data redownloading live ! Thought I had lost everything ! This is my first connection to Apple Community. Really useful !!

Jul 16, 2014 8:48 AM in response to TheOriginal150mph

I'm on Mavericks... so I don't know if this works for PREVIOUS versions...

File -> Import Mailboxes... Navigate to {backupDisk}/Users/Yourname/Library/Mail/V2/Mailboxes and then choose the mailbox to import.

Mail will put the imported mailboxes in a folder: ON MY MAC -> Import

You can then move them UP to ON MY MAC and then organize them as you had them before.

Feb 8, 2015 12:53 AM in response to TheOriginal150mph

This worked a treat for me:

http://www.maclife.com/article/howtos/how_manually_restore_emails_time_machine_b ackup

Oops, there's no gap in "_backup"

Aug 12, 2015 2:39 AM in response to larr_helms

Hey Larr Helms you just solved the final piece in the puzzle for me - thank you so much. I am restoring files from a Just Cloud back up so downloading the file to a temp folder and then using your Import routine. I found that I need to tick the Apple Mail as a source as this then recognises the file as being from different version. If you just tick other file as an option then it sees the mbox as empty.

Cheers!

Restoring Mail folders after system re-install : Am I screwed?