How to transfer mailboxes (in V3 file) without rebuilding mailboxes every time

What you are doing makes no sense. Copying the mail folder back and forth between computers is not a good idea. Use IMAP accounts and the mail will be synced between both computers at all times.

What you are doing isn't good and you will continue to have problems. I don't know what to tell you to avoid the problems you are having in doing that. If you feel you have to do it in that fashion, export the mailbox from one and import it on the other computer.

There are much better ways to accomplish what you want.

From your description, you are using a POP account. In Mail's preferences, open the Accounts tab and select the account in the sidebar. Click on the Advanced tab and either uncheck the box to delete the message from the server after downloading, or set a time frame such as a month to delete to ensure you have time to download the message on the other computer. You will need to do this on both computers, or at least the one you download messages first on to ensure they stay on the server for the other device. They will be downloaded to each device as new until removed from the server.

Settings should be similar to this:

As I said before, a better option is to change the account from POP to IMAP. With IMAP, each device is synced and reflects what's on the server. Delete a message on one will delete from the server and will be synced to the other device automatically. Syncing messages between more than one device is the major benefit of IMAP. You can set most mail accounts either way.

This sounds familiar to my problem, which is unresolved. I have a work computer and a notebook for when I travel. I like to keep all of my mail with me because I use it as a searchable database.

I do have an imap account but I do have folders "on my mac' which I move things to, since the amount of email I've accumulated over the years is about 28GB of data (yes, a lot of email going back to 2010.

In previous OSX versions (everything up to El Capitan) I would simply grab the mail forlder and mail download folder and replace it on my notebook and everything woudl be there.

At one point in Yosemite, the com.apple.mail.plist file was necessary to move from the preferences folder, but that file no longer exists there anymore.

I desperately want to preserve my workflow so I can continue to keep all my mail with me when I travel, then move everything back when I'm back int he office - I would really, really appreciate any help here to do this.

iMac:

10.11.1

27", Mid 211

3.4GHz i&

16GB, 1TB HD

macbook Air

10.11.1

13" early 2014

1.7GHz core i7

8GB, 512GB SSD

I don't know. I copy the whole mail folder over, which has V3 in it, then try to rebuild the "On My Mac" folders, nothing happens. I suppose I could try only replacing the V3 folder and see what happens.

Apple is sure doing a great job at making things more difficult for non-technical users.

I really do appreciate you taking the time to reassure me. Don't know if it will work for subfolders within a folder, but the bottom line really is - this is not a viable solution.

Before El Capitan, this was a process of replacing a folder on one computer with one from another, maybe an hour to let them do their job. This would become a task that would take days and be out of date by the time it was done.

There must be another way.

I have been using Chronosync to sync my mail on a home Mac and Macbook Air. This has been working flawlessly for years.

This mail issue is by far not the only havoc that "El Capitan" has wreaked upon us (Airdrop, server SSL chain issues, mail account settings etc. etc.)

Since the update from Yosemite to 10.11.2 I have been spending days to fix Macs and a server and as soon as I thought I was done another issue appeared.

One may really wonder what the Apple software engineers are doing. We don't need a new update every 2 months. Get one update right, Apple ! Just one for God's sake.

Thank you !

I found the following simple work-around that will rebuild ALL your mailboxes in one fell swoop:

"Quit Mail, then delete all the files in this folder that start with "Envelope Index." On Yosemite that will be three (3) files (Envelope Index, Envelope Index-shm, and Envelope Index-wal); on older versions of OS X it may be simply one file. Once deleted, relaunch Mail and the file(s) will be rebuilt, along with your mailboxes."

Source: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/answers/how_to_clean_up_and_rebuild_apple_mail_da ta

The same three envelope files exist in 10.11.2 and deleteting them caused Mail to re-build all mailboxes. This may take a while and in the beginning Mail may show a wrong unread count.

No wonder that Windows users are sniffing at “El Capitan” and call it “El Capron” when they hear of such issues.

I am a network and server admin and I have more important tasks at hand than to find work-arounds for buggy OSX updates.

Not amused.

I found the following simple work-around that will rebuild ALL your mailboxes in one fell swoop:

"Quit Mail, then delete all the files in this folder that start with "Envelope Index." On Yosemite that will be three (3) files (Envelope Index, Envelope Index-shm, and Envelope Index-wal); on older versions of OS X it may be simply one file. Once deleted, relaunch Mail and the file(s) will be rebuilt, along with your mailboxes."

Source: http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/answers/how_to_clean_up_and_rebuild_apple_mail_da ta

The same three envelope files exist in 10.11.2 and deleteting them caused Mail to re-build all mailboxes. This may take a while and in the beginning Mail may show a wrong unread count.

No wonder if Windows users are sniffing at “El Capitan” and call it “El ******” when they hear of such issues.

I am a network and serve admin and I have more important tasks at hand than to find work-arounds for buggy OSX updates.

Not amused.

Same problem here...rebuilding mailboxes every time I transfer to the laptop is not an useful solution I am afraid, nor is dumping 20 GB of old email into the IMAP server.

A few days ago I did a full sync of my home folder to my MB Air using Chronosync (although just manually copying the home folder should work just as well.) This time my mail folders did *not* need to be re-build.

Drawback: after the sync which included the entire ~/library/ directory a few accounts on the target Mac did not work anymore (mail, calendar, contacts) and I had to recreate them. As the keychain and other folders are replaced on the target this may not be an option if the target Mac uses other apps than the source Mac.

There must be one or more files in ~/library that save the "state" of each mail folder but that are not located inside ~/library/mail.

If these files were known they could be synced together with ~/library/mail.

There may also be a new setting in the mail app relevant to POP accounts that has eluded us.