2015 - MAC BOOK PRO - MAIL BACKUP TO USB EXTERNAL DRIVE AND RESTORE

Question

2015 - MAC BOOK PRO - MAIL BACKUP TO USB EXTERNAL DRIVE AND RESTORE

Hi All,

I'm not a MAC user, but my Director is and he wants me to backup onto an external hard drive once a week, his email, which I am to understand uses "MAIL". ( not Outlook as that is used for another business ).

I have read the various posts, but they seem quite dated now and wondered if someone could kindly just in simple terms advise the process in being able to back up and restore the email files ( should we need to restore at some point ).

I have done this many times on a PC, for Outlook 2003, and 2010 where you can copy the outlook.pst file and restore it in a particular location, however imagine this is different for a MAC on MAIL.

Any advise is appreciated.

Best regards

Paul @ Stubbins UK.

MacBook Pro, At present I dont know the OS ver.

Posted on Sep 21, 2015 3:04 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 21, 2015 3:27 AM in response to paulfromstubbins

I just thought I should highlight the point that we need to backup both inbox and sent items, which also include any sub folders within both of those.

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Answer 2

Sep 21, 2015 4:55 AM in response to paulfromstubbins

I have been reading that Time Machine does this... But I dont know if it can be set to ONLY backup the email from the MAIL application?

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Answer 3

_Jock

Level 1

24 points

Oct 5, 2015 7:07 AM in response to paulfromstubbins

I'm about to do this myself - the most helpful information I can find was from http://ccm.net/faq/11317-mac-os-back-up-your-mail-folder

The folder that contains all your emails is called "Mail":

Drive/Users/username/ Library/Mail
First you must close the Mail application go to the above location and copy the folder on removable disk.
To restore it simply copy it back (it can be as weel for a new account)
The system will ask if you want well replace the existing folder, simply confirm with the Yes button.

Note that: The Mail preferences file is here:

Hard disk/Users/username/Library/preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

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