Mojave to Catalina, Mail Issues

[baggss]

So my desktop iMac (Mojave) died but I have a good time machine backup. Transitioning my MacBook Pro (Catalina) tone my all time computer. I pull my Mail folder from the Time Machine's last backup to the same location on my laptop and open mail. It says it's importing etc, but in the end none of my saved folders with mail show up in Mail. All of my old e-mail is dumped in a folder named archive, but the whole storage hierarchy is gone.

Anyone know how to get them back? Never had an issue with this before...

EDIT: Never-mind, I figured it out finally. Duh!

 

[MacInWin]

Well, the way to restore Mail used to be to open Mail, then enter TM from Mail and you got a TM version of Mail to restore whatever folders you wanted. No import, just a straightforward restore. However, I just tried that with my Catalina MBP and it crashed Mail. I sent the report to Apple, but I think it would be interesting if someone else tried it and let us know if it still works in Catalina.

 

[baggss]

I was able to get the folder hierarchy back with all the mail. I just had to find the folder in Time-Machines Mail where they were. Took a while but it worked. Once I imported them I was able to move them out of the imported folder and into my regular mail under "On mY Mac".

 

[Slydude]

I think I've done two different installations of Catalina and not had issues with Mail and moving from Mojave to Catalina. I haven't tried moving the Mal folder from Time Machine myself.

In the first installation I did an upgrade install so Mail came over OK. The second time I did the Catalina installation I think I used Migration Assistant to move things over once the basic Catalina installation was complete.

 

[baggss]

Migration assistant would have been easier, just copy the time machine backup to my laptop and go. Unfortunately my MBP only has a 500Gb HDD and my desktop was using more space than that. I have to be selective about what I bring across or I risk running out of space pretty fast.

 

[Slydude]

For future reference Migration Assistant has a way to restore only parts of a Time Machine backup. See the last screenshot in this Apple document. IIRC As you select the items to restore it gives a running count of how much space will be used.

 

[baggss]

For future reference Migration Assistant has a way to restore only parts of a Time Machine backup. See the last screenshot in this Apple document. IIRC As you select the items to restore it gives a running count of how much space will be used.

Yeah, been a while since I used it. I've been using both machines for some years and I'm now pairing down to just the MBP until I get around to getting a new Mac Mini to replace the iMac. Kinda forget some of the nice details about Migration assistant. Thanks for the info!

 

[Slydude]

Glad to help. I often forget little details like that for tasks I don't do very often.