How to transfer Mail from El Capitan to Sierra?

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Level 1

12 points

How to transfer Mail from El Capitan to Sierra?

Hi,

I've updated my Mac incrementally for many years now and decided it was time to perform a clean install. Virtually everything is straightforward to reinstall or transfer from the old installation, but Mail is the most important thing. It used to be that this was a simple matter of transferring ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail to the new machine, but this is no longer the case as the account information is now centralized on the system.

I found this post (Manual Mail Migration), but it didn't work for me. The new Mail was completely empty. I re-added my accounts which triggered them all to re-download hundreds of thousands of emails. This left the mail I copied over "orphaned", wasting dozens of GB of space. It also doesn't solve the problem of the account that is now closed. I tried to import that folder, but that didn't work well.

Migration Assistant doesn't allow me to just select "email", and I don't want to copy all of my preferences and documents from the old machine/TM backup.

Does anyone know how to manually transfer email and accounts from El Cap to Sierra?

Thanks!

iMac (27-inch Mid 2011), macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Oct 18, 2016 6:31 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Offf

Level 1

13 points

Jan 17, 2017 1:24 AM in response to Demitri Muna

Hi Demitri!

I'm on the same problem that tou had Did you managed to find an option? I bought a new mac and wanted to use a new clean install and just transfer the more important thing...the e-mail! Can't find how!

Best,

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Answer 2

AjayJain

Level 1

4 points

Sep 23, 2017 11:32 PM in response to Demitri Muna

This is so nuts. I bought a new computer but am stuck to using the old one as I can't transfer the mail. And I need to transfer it so it looks cloned from the previous machine - I have organized thousands of mails and they need to stay that way.

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Answer 3

tygb

Level 9

64,588 points

Sep 24, 2017 3:58 AM in response to Demitri Muna

Take back of all mails in V3 folder : Method to copy mails in V3 folder .

Click on Go on top menu bar , hold option key click on > library > select mail folder > right click on mail folder there itself > click on copy mail > right click on extreme right hand side in column B , that is below persistence info.plist > click on paste item .

Entire mails are copied to V3 folder .

Note : For El Capitan - the folder will be V3 , and for OSX Yosemite the folder will be V2

Take a USB stick and copy V3 folder into it and eject it .

Insert the USB stick in the second machine ( Mac OS Sierra ) .

Configure new IMAP account in Mac OS Sierra , go to top menu bar , file > import mail boxes > import data from > select apple mail > click on continue > select the back drop folder then choose new .

When new IMAP account is opened , a new folder with all mails will appear in the mail side bar .You can rename the folder .

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Answer 4

Oct 14, 2017 2:02 PM in response to tygb

This worked for me!

I had tried copying my V3 folder into Library>Mail on my new computer but it the file would disappear / be over written.

Importing the V3 file directly into Mail from my hard drive worked. The import folder appeared in my Mail sidebar and then I was able to sort messages into my actual working folders.

Exactly the solution I was looking for!!

Thank you.

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Answer 5

rose_10

Community Specialist

Oct 18, 2016 6:55 PM in response to Demitri Muna

Hello Demitri Muna,

Thanks for asking about your Mac Mail here in the Apple Support Communities. I am happy to offer an option to do this.

The first thing we want to ensure is that all your data is safe. You can make a backup using Time Machine and an external hard drive. Use this article for help making a backup of your Mac: Use Time Machine to back up or restore your Mac .

Once this is done, you can export each individual mailbox to an external drive, then import them back into the Mac once you have the new operating system installed. This help article will assist you: Mail for Mac: Import or export mailboxes .

Thanks again and have a great rest of your day.

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Answer 6

Demitri Muna Author

Level 1

12 points

Nov 15, 2016 7:42 AM in response to rose_10

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for the reply. I had a full Time Machine backup of my computer before upgrading to Sierra. The problem here is that I had already upgraded to Sierra, so I couldn't go back to El Capitan and export my email.

I tried to reinstall the system, this time using the Migration Assistant to bring over my documents from the Time Machine backup. This did bring over my documents, but my mail was in the same state. The mail from the disabled account did not carry over (the files were, but they did not appear in Mail). Mail also re-downloaded hundreds of thousands of email messages from my various accounts instead of using what was on disk.

The main problem here is that I'm not able to perform a clean install of the OS. There is no supported way to just copy over my email and nothing else, so I either copy everything over to get my email or nothing.

Anyway, thanks for the help.

Demitri

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Answer 7

Nov 15, 2016 8:24 AM in response to Demitri Muna

The easiest way to bring all back is to use Migration Assistant and migrate your user account(s). This brings all mail and documents you had. Don't bring back applications and settings, but install those fresh.

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Answer 8

Demitri Muna Author

Level 1

12 points

Nov 15, 2016 8:40 AM in response to Luis Sequeira1

Thanks for the reply. That's exactly what I did. It did not migrate my email - it migrated my accounts and re-downloaded them all from the servers. I had an account in Mail that was no longer active (but had thousands of email messages). It did *not* transfer this email, seemingly because it could not connect to the server.

Second, I did not want to transfer all of my documents, preferences, etc. I wanted a clean installation. I just wanted to transfer my email - arguably the most important thing. But since my "email" is now scattered across numerous files (see the link I posted above) that are not documented, I could not transfer just email.

I'm not annoyed with you; I'm very annoyed with Apple here. I don't care if they want to make things complicated if they document them, but they don't. Migration Assistant is fine for my mom, but it's too opaque and blunt for me (30 year Mac user). I will file a bug report, but as usual that won't help me recover my missing email (still available in my backup).

Thanks,

Demitri

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Answer 9

tygb

Level 9

64,588 points

Oct 14, 2017 8:41 PM in response to Worthydocs

🙂

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