Is it possible to manually set the location of my Mail mailboxes?

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Is it possible to manually set the location of my Mail mailboxes?

Hi, a slightly involved question.

Is it possible to manually set the location of the mailboxes that are created by Mail?

The reason for the inquiry is that I have limited space on my SSD boot drive due to running Bootcamp with Windows. I have a secondary HDD (which has replaced the optical drive) with plenty of space. I would like to move the mailbox folders to the secondary drive.

All my mail accounts are IMAP as I occasionally require offline access to them.

Each mail account folder is currently located in:

users>myname>library>Mail>V2>

How can I 'persuade' Mail to let me change the path for the multiple mailboxes?

MacBook Pro (13-inch Mid 2012), OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), Running Bootcamp with Win 7.

Posted on Feb 19, 2014 6:50 AM

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Answer 1

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Richard-Stone Author

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Feb 19, 2014 8:16 AM in response to Richard-Stone

I think I have done it.

This may not be the best way of achieving a resolution, but it seems to be working - for now...

1. I opened the Accounts.plst file located in:

users>myname>library>Mail>V2>MailData

2. Find and Replace all path references that pointed to my boot drive. These were changed to the new path location on the secondary drive. I saved and closed the updated accounts.plist file.

3. Moved the mailbox folders (pertaining to my email accounts) to the new folder. Created aliases for each folder and placed them in the original file location. (Probably unnecessary, but useful for my reference).

4. Deleted the original mailbox folder.

5. Restarted Mail and hey presto!

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