Transferring mailboxes from one mac to another

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I was just helping someone out yesterday who purchased a new macbook pro. He had mail on his older macbook and wanted all of his mailboxes transferred to his new macbook. Note he did not want the account settings just the local mailboxes. He had started up a new account on the new one.

Anyway, he had about 20 mailboxes on his old one and I simply copied them from the /Users/username/Library/Mailboxes/ folder on the old one to the new macbook pro.

I opened up Mail on the new Mac and there were all of his mailboxes I had just transferred over.

I get a call from him today saying that while the boxes are there, there is no mail inside the boxes. He checked the sizes of the mailboxes in the Library/Mai/Mailboxes and they were correct - some over 2GB.

Is there something I missed or did wrong?

Thanks in advance!
 

chscag

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Did you also copy all the *.mbox folders and info that they contain which are listed under his account?

For example: I have a mailbox that I call "Archived" here is how it's listed =

/Users/my user name/Library/Mail/Mailboxes/archived.mbox/

There are also sub-folders below each *.mbox folder that can contain attachments and messages. All would have to be copied exactly as they were on his old machine.

Regards.
 
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Yes, copied the entire contents of .mbx folders over to the new machine.
 
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Will the Export feature in Mail and then the using the Import feature on the new computer solve the problem of copying the Mail Contents.
It seems to me that would be easier to do.

DavidH
 

sjh


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I have exactly the same problem. I want to add my macbook pro mailboxes to my imac, without replacing the mailboxes already on my imac mail system. the folders were added, but I can't see the emails in them through mail (although i can see them in finder, so they are definitely there on my imac)...any ideas?
 

sjh


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Problem solved!

All I needed to do was to select the newly copied mailboxes in MacMail and then select Mailboxes/Repair in the drop down menu. All the messages then appeared!
 
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on 10.6.8

All I needed to do was to select the newly copied mailboxes in MacMail and then select Mailboxes/Repair in the drop down menu. All the messages then appeared!

Thanks, that procedure worked for me too. On 10.6.8, the menu item is Mailbox -> Rebuild
 

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