Backing up mail

So I have had Tiger sitting on my desk for over two weeks now, and I finally want to install it and start using it (imagine that ). I have read most of the other threads in regards to ways to upgrade, yadda yadda, but one thing I cannot quite figure out is this:

I want to have my current emails on the new system, however I would like to have mail.app be clean and require me to reset all of my accounts (as there have been many changes and I just would prefer this). So is there is a simple way to save the folder structure and existing emails while not having all of the settings copied over when I move to Tiger?

 

After reading that I just came up with the idea (not sure why not before) to simply erase all of the accounts and then open new accounts in the new mail.app program under Tiger. Correct me if I am wrong, but wouldn't that allow me to keep all the current mails and simply eradicate all the account-settings that are causing me troubles? or does mail.app delete all mails tied to a given account upon account deletion? (that would be odd, just curious)

 

Alright, thanks for the help. I checked the help files but couldn't find anything directly relating to the question, actually never found the part you quoted so I appreciate it. Thanks again.