Archiving Old Mail

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ishawnishawn
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
Hey there. I was wondering if the simple action of dragging and dropping of the mailbox folders I created in Mail to a CD so that I can read them by putting the CD in and having a way to keep the file size down on the computer. Is this the best way to do so? If I switched to a new computer and just retyped my Mail Settings like address, servers, etc. could the CD of the old mail messages from the old computer still be opened by mail so that I could read them later on? Even if the mail was originally created by Mail 1.



I don't see the necessity in copying my home folder and other stuff because I don't need any of the documents from the old computer, if I had a CD of my Mail, that would make things a lot more organized for me.



[Hoping this drag and drop is as easy as they say it is]

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    keshkesh Posts: 621member
    Just go into {Username}->Library->Mail and copy the Mailboxes folder to your CD. When you need to restore, just launch Mail once, configure your settings, quit, and then drag these mailboxes right into the Mailboxes folder on your new/reformatted system. Should show right up.



    However, there's no guarantee it'll work that smoothly between various OS versions (10.2 mailboxes might not smoothly go into 10.3 or 10.4, etc.). Should work fine, but I won't guarantee it.
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  • Reply 2 of 7
    jwink3101jwink3101 Posts: 739member
    You can also just drag the mail box you want from Mail to the desktop or a burnable CD in finder
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  • Reply 3 of 7
    ishawnishawn Posts: 364member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Jwink3101

    You can also just drag the mail box you want from Mail to the desktop or a burnable CD in finder



    Yup. I decided to go with that. God I love drag and drop.
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  • Reply 4 of 7
    ishawnishawn Posts: 364member
    Switching to the new OS, I can't drag and copy from 10.3 to 10.4 - but it's still on the CD so I'll just go with that.
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  • Reply 5 of 7
    thinkingdifferentthinkingdifferent Posts: 1,604member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kesh

    However, there's no guarantee it'll work that smoothly between various OS versions (10.2 mailboxes might not smoothly go into 10.3 or 10.4, etc.). Should work fine, but I won't guarantee it.



    The old mailboxes should be able to be imported. This is how I got my old mail into Tiger.
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  • Reply 6 of 7
    ishawnishawn Posts: 364member
    Well, I tried the import wizard and it didn't like that.. maybe I need to copy it to my hard drive before-hand? And dragging it didn't do anything to it. Is there a way that Spotlight can search through the text- then I can just put them on a folder in my drive and then get to them as I need to...



    Also... tediously - saving to a specified folder after opening them up is the only way I can get it to work. But with 1,000+ messages that'll get old really quick.
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  • Reply 7 of 7
    thinkingdifferentthinkingdifferent Posts: 1,604member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by iShawn

    Well, I tried the import wizard and it didn't like that..



    I will admit that the import wizard was quirky. I had copied the mailbox files to my iPod before I performed my clean install of Tiger. The first time I tried to import my mail it appeared to do nothing. The second time I tried it worked. Go figure.
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