"Export Mailbox" is only exporting a small part of the mailbox

Question

profdrsung Author

Level 1

10 points

"Export Mailbox" is only exporting a small part of the mailbox

I have organized my old emails in local mailboxes by year.

When i export one of those mailboxes, it is way smaller than the corresponding folder in Library/Mail. (9,5GB vs. 1GB)

When I import the exported mbox file again, most of the messages are missing.

It seems, that Mail is only exporting parts of the mailbox.

What I want, is to export the whole mailbox (which is the expected outcome, when you tell it to "export a mailbox")

Any suggestions?

I'm using Mail 10.3 (mac OS sierra 10.12.5)

Posted on Jul 12, 2017 12:35 AM

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Answer 1

AppleJoe

Community Manager

Jul 12, 2017 12:50 PM in response to profdrsung

Hi profdrsung ,

I understand that you are trying to export mailboxes, but they don't contain all of the messages that they should. I'm happy to provide some help for this issue.

I recommend rebuilding the mailboxes that this happens with, and then export the mailbox again. The following article tells you how to rebuild your mailboxes:

Mail for Mac: Rebuild mailboxes

Thanks for using the Apple Support Communities. Cheers!

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

685,251 points

Jul 12, 2017 2:15 PM in response to profdrsung

If the above doesn’t work, try re-indexing the mailboxes. This can take awhile if you have a lot of mail.

Reindex messages For El Capitan, try looking in V3. Sierra use V4

Reindex messages (2) See post by Linc Davis

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