Archiving very old mail on new computer?

[JES]

Greetings. I'm writing for help on a basic backup issue: how to archive old mail and keep it backed up as I move to a new computer running MacOS 12.6 and with plenty of storage.

What I want to do: import old mailboxes that exist only on the hard drive of the old Mac onto the new Mac as efficiently as possible, without using Migration Assistant.

What's there: over 20 years of selected correspondence, mostly done with Apple mail. Some of it was originally in Eurdora, but was moved to Mail. Until 2016, I archived mail by month, then by year (that used to matter for search, it no longer does).

I also have several years of old mail on Gmail and Exchange servers that I want to pull off using Mail's "Archive" function.

I understand Apple Mail now has an easy "archive" function to pull old messages off servers. But should I just import the old mailboxes? If so, is the best way to drag them into the subfolder of mail where I want them and then import them, or move them to an external hard drive and then export them?

I'm also open to other programs besides Apple Mail if there's a better way to do this.

TIA.

 

[Fishrrman]

First, I'd get an EXTERNAL drive that would become my "archival" drive.

Actually, I'd get TWO external drives. One as the primary archive, and the second drive becomes a backup of the primary archive. One drive is NEVER enough for archived data.

I'd probably use SATA SSDs for this purpose. Cheap and durable.

I've never tried Mail.app's "archive" feature. But...

One way you could preserve old emails would be to do this:
1. Connect your external archive drive.
2. Navigate to home/library
3. Locate the "Mail" folder, and just copy the entire folder to the archive drive.

All your old emails are now "in there".
They can be re-imported, but you can probably go into the folder "V6" (on my Mac I'm using Mojave, it may be a different "V" version on later versions of the OS... checked on Monterey and it's now "V9"), poke around, and find individual emails. I can double-click them and they'll open up in Mail to read...

If you have a drive laying around with some space, experiment with this.
If it doesn't work, just erase it and move on.

 

[JES]

Thanks for your reply, but I don't see how this helps me achieve what I want to do. Why do I need two extra external drives for this on top of a large internal drive and my existing backup strategy? What's the advantage? It's not like text files take up a huge amount of space. And why is this preferable to keeping the old mail searchable from within the Mail app?

 

[gilby101]

how to archive old mail and keep it backed up

I am assuming that all the mail is either stored 1) just locally on the old Mac (in the "On My Mac" mailbox) or 2) has been downloaded from all your mail services (that would include gmail and Exchange). Now to export.

The standard way is to export the email from Apple Mail. For every folder in Apple Maps sidebar: Select the folder and choose menu Mailbox > Export. That will ask for somewhere (a folder somewhere on your disks) to put the export.

The export is created in 'mbox' format which consists of a folder named xxx.mbox with inside it 2 files table_of_contents and mbox. The latter is the most important and is a single text with all the messages and most attachments.

So, you will end up with one of these mbox folders for every mailbox/folder within Apple Mail.

The folders should be backed up and stored carefully. If it were me, I would use 1) a local hard disk, and 2) somewhere in the cloud. Since the mbox file is not encrypted in anyway, you may want to encrypt the backups.

What I want to do: import old mailboxes that exist only on the hard drive of the old Mac onto the new Mac as efficiently as possible, without using Migration Assistant.

Assuming your intention is to import the emails into Apple Mail on the new Mac:

You should always use Apple Mail's import functionality.

Connect the disk with the mbox files - either directly or via a file share. Then use Apple Mail's menu File > Import Mailboxes. Choose 'Files in mbox format' and then the xxx.mbox folder created above. The mail will be imported and put in a Mail folder called Import (or some variation of that) and placed inside the "On My Mac" mailbox inside Apple Mail.

You may well want to rename and/or move the newly imported mail folder.

I'm also open to other programs besides Apple Mail if there's a better way to do this.

For the saving of mail and transfer to new Mac, I would do as above.

For the future, you could consider software designed explicitly for email archiving. I use EagleFiler, but there are others. I haven't used, but like the look of Mail Archiver https://www.mothsoftware.com/. Both cost, but you would want to test beforehand as their cost is in the <$100 range, not the <$20.

And make sure you have a good backup strategy for your email. For both email stored within Apple Mail and any exported email.

 

[JES]

I am assuming that all the mail is either stored 1) just locally on the old Mac (in the "On My Mac" mailbox) or 2) has been downloaded from all your mail services (that would include gmail and Exchange). Now to export.

The standard way is to export the email from Apple Mail. For every folder in Apple Maps sidebar: Select the folder and choose menu Mailbox > Export. That will ask for somewhere (a folder somewhere on your disks) to put the export.

The export is created in 'mbox' format which consists of a folder named xxx.mbox with inside it 2 files table_of_contents and mbox. The latter is the most important and is a single text with all the messages and most attachments.

So, you will end up with one of these mbox folders for every mailbox/folder within Apple Mail.

The folders should be backed up and stored carefully. If it were me, I would use 1) a local hard disk, and 2) somewhere in the cloud. Since the mbox file is not encrypted in anyway, you may want to encrypt the backups.


Assuming your intention is to import the emails into Apple Mail on the new Mac:

You should always use Apple Mail's import functionality.

Connect the disk with the mbox files - either directly or via a file share. Then use Apple Mail's menu File > Import Mailboxes. Choose 'Files in mbox format' and then the xxx.mbox folder created above. The mail will be imported and put in a Mail folder called Import (or some variation of that) and placed inside the "On My Mac" mailbox inside Apple Mail.

You may well want to rename and/or move the newly imported mail folder.


For the saving of mail and transfer to new Mac, I would do as above.

For the future, you could consider software designed explicitly for email archiving. I use EagleFiler, but there are others. I haven't used, but like the look of Mail Archiver https://www.mothsoftware.com/. Both cost, but you would want to test beforehand as their cost is in the <$100 range, not the <$20.

And make sure you have a good backup strategy for your email. For both email stored within Apple Mail and any exported email.

That’s great, thank you!

 

[gilby101]

That’s great, thank you!

Glad that helps. Test very carefully - it is so easy to make a mis-step with mail archives (even when you think you know what you are doing!).