Manual Mail Migration

Sadly, this didn't work for me either...

I'm have a bear of a time. I recently upgraded my "old" MBP to El Capitan, and then got a "new" MBP that I decided to do a fresh install.

I haven't been able to switch to the new computer because I can't figure out how to get my email switched over.

This is really driving me crazy, and I can not believe there aren't "real" instructions somewhere on how to do this.

Do i need to copy of keychain if i am using Icloud Keychain, as this should sync up the new computer automatically i assume with the relevant passwords?

Sidetracking here a bit but all documentations seem to suggest Migration tools for things like contacts etc . But whats wrong with using icloud sync ?

This is great! Thank you.

This went from being so easy to - WHAT!! This should have taken 2 minutes. 3 senior Apple techs, not a clue. So it looks like you're the MAN. Very cool.

Jeffrey

Thank you ! Your ~/Library/Accounts/ tip solved my problem of being unable to restore mail.all after a clean El Capitan re-install.

I've been trying to transfer Mail from one desktop machine with El Cap to my MBook Air also running El Cap. Total nighmare.

Done as suggested above manually moving the files across including the ~/library/accounts folder. The only accounts that appear in Mail are those that were there prior to the move even though I've overwritten all the previous information. Or at least I thought I had. I think the mailboxes are there but Mail is not recognising them.

I've even tried setting up 'new' mailboxes but for some reason the mail server doesn't recognise the password even though it is correct since it's the same one I use on the Desktop.

Has anyone any other ideas as this is really driving me crazy. Other posters are right - it really shouldn't be this difficult.

Given that so many people appear to be having difficulty migrating Mail from one machine to another, I would have thought that an Applescript/Automator Guru could knock up a small app to make the process as simple as possible.

It might mean that you have to re-input your passwords for each account but it would at least simplify the process.

Hi,

I don't suppose you have any advice for someone moving mail from Mountain Lion to a brand new MacBook Air running El Capitan? I haven't been able to access my Time Machine backups from the new computer so far, and it sounds like importing from those might not work anyway. Setting up my accounts and rules from scratch on the new machine wouldn't be a problem, just a hassle. But I have a lot of mailboxes on the Mountain Lion Macbook that I'd like to transfer over to the new El Capitan machine if possible, and I'm not sure how to proceed. Sorry to bug you, and I wish Apple had some official help available for this.

This worked for me. I trasfered 52GB of data (4GB were attachments) and somewhere around 10 internet accounts. I did have to make sure permissions were set correctly on each file/folder I copied over. Had to specificially set preferences individually to read/write. Thanks apple_Mikey

You are my hero! Thanks for this! I spent a day trying to migrate my data and following various other instructions, none of which worked. I think you are correct in that the key is to migrate the account file. It really is a shame that this is so hard. Thank you for writing this up!

Hi apple_mikey,

unfortunately, that didn't work for me. Most of the Folders and files where there and I replaced it, but Mail didn't show anything.

But as I archive all the mails from time to time to local folders, I'm right now importing all the Local Mailboxes which seems to work well using the import function. Still running... hope everything is there when finished.

I have two IMAP mailboxes, downloading them should also be no problem. So that's my workaround to get my mails into my fresh install of El Capitan.

Oh, holy heaven, Apple! This is ridiculous! I have many accounts and have tried this a million times already, but I'm thinking that your permissions thing might be my issue -- did you have to change the permissions in every single file you moved over?

Hi. So only these file is enough? a part of the mail file in library?

Which posting did you reply to?

I imported the Mails i had in "Local mailboxes" using the import function. Import - Apple Mail... 10.000s of mails, takes some time, but worked good.

I'm archiving the IMAP mails from time to time in local mailboxes (inbox 2013, 2014 and so on) and I'm saving attachments somewhere else and remove them from the mails, so the imap folders don't get too big.

See this post for an extensive description of problems and steps taken to solve them in migrating mail from a cloned 10.8 system to a fresh install of 10.11.

In the end, I almost succeeded — everything was there: messages, mailboxes on my Mac, smart mailboxes, rules, other preferences, etc. Except that I only had 5,000 messages instead of the 7,000 I had on my 10.8 system.

Some of the steps described here didn’t work for me, but I have to admit I never tried the whole sequence, and my other post does not address that. Curious and insatiable as I am, I think I will redo my mail transfer following these exact steps and see what happens.

Thanks for your post. I know how much experimentation goes into discovering and describing this kind of thing effectively.

Thank you apple_mikey! I did a clean install of El Capitan and was able to fairly easily customize and/or copy Library files from my old Mac to my new Mac, but could not come close to getting Mail (along with hundreds of folders and subfolders) to work on the new Mac. Then I found you solution, carefully followed it, and--low and behold--it worked! The only think I needed to do to get it to fully work was a restart of the Mac.

Thank you so much for taking the time to work through this and for the detailed solution!