How can I copy all the email and the sub-folders?

[chmania]

How about creating a web-based email account (like Gmail) and forwarding all your emails there? Then, you'd have a web copy of all your emails and attached files. I've had Gmail since 2007, and everything is still intact. I just checked, and it also reminds me that it's time to clean it up.

 

[Dervla]

I have an IMAP account and by default the emails stay in the cloud but are synched to the connected devices when you do a send / receive (so you can read them offline, and it will sync back next time you are online). I need to manually move my emails into a local file structure (On My Mac) periodically so the emails don’t build up and exceed my allowed cloud storage.

"I need to manually move my emails into a local file structure (On My Mac)"

How exactly do you do that?

 

[Miss Terri]

I'm a more casual user, not as experienced as others on this thread. But since I'm an old fogie with a POP account, maybe I can contribute.

So I do use POP email and Apple Mail. Everything is on my one computer (and its backups).

I can read and retrieve all my previously read/retrieved e-mail even if not online, so that lends credence to the "once it's on your Mac it's on your Mac" theory.

There are times I'm away from Internet for a few weeks, and I can still look through and read all my old e-mails (dating only back to 1999, so I'm a pup compared to @Fishrrman )

This does explain something: I never understood why there even was an "On my Mac" set of boxes in my Apple Mail program. Like why? Because all of my e-mail (even the inbox) is "on my Mac." Now I finally understand that (because that doesn't happen if you use something other than POP mail).

And yes, I can tweak a setting with my ISP that says how long they will save new mail on their servers after I have retrieved it. When I was moving to a new computer or having some sort of difficulty I would set that to a longer time period, and then I could "re-retrieve" those e-mail in case I needed to. Mind you, that doesn't help with anything in your "sent" box (at least I don't think so).

 

[Dervla]

I'm a more casual user, not as experienced as others on this thread. But since I'm an old fogie with a POP account, maybe I can contribute.

So I do use POP email and Apple Mail. Everything is on my one computer (and its backups).

I can read and retrieve all my previously read/retrieved e-mail even if not online, so that lends credence to the "once it's on your Mac it's on your Mac" theory.

There are times I'm away from Internet for a few weeks, and I can still look through and read all my old e-mails (dating only back to 1999, so I'm a pup compared to @Fishrrman )

This does explain something: I never understood why there even was an "On my Mac" set of boxes in my Apple Mail program. Like why? Because all of my e-mail (even the inbox) is "on my Mac." Now I finally understand that (because that doesn't happen if you use something other than POP mail).

And yes, I can tweak a setting with my ISP that says how long they will save new mail on their servers after I have retrieved it. When I was moving to a new computer or having some sort of difficulty I would set that to a longer time period, and then I could "re-retrieve" those e-mail in case I needed to. Mind you, that doesn't help with anything in your "sent" box (at least I don't think so).

Thank you

 

[danmart]

"I need to manually move my emails into a local file structure (On My Mac)"

How exactly do you do that?

It’s similar to the steps that @Fishrrman described in post #3.

In Mail, I have a section which shows my accounts, including my IMAP account, and this has folders like the Inbox. I also have a section called On My Mac which has a separate hierarchy of folders, actually on the device. I just need to drag emails from the folders associated with my IMAP account into the folders On My Mac. That causes them to be removed from the account into the cloud.

 

[Dervla]

It’s similar to the steps that @Fishrrman described in post #3.

In Mail, I have a section which shows my accounts, including my IMAP account, and this has folders like the Inbox. I also have a section called On My Mac which has a separate hierarchy of folders, actually on the device. I just need to drag emails from the folders associated with my IMAP account into the folders On My Mac. That causes them to be removed from the account into the cloud.

Thanks for your response,

1)
I understand and have done up to the last three words of last sentence of your reply,
“… into the cloud”.
Into the cloud? I thought the emails in the On My Mac section were living on the iMac.




2) And,
I use the iMac pretty much every day. Also, I purchased a MacBook a few months ago that I use once in a while. The MacBook does not have an On My Mac section in Mail,

-how would I make one?

-if I want to have the emails in On My Mac on the iMac on a On My Mac section on the MacBook, would I do something called Export Mailboxes on the iMac, to an external hard drive, and then Import Mailboxes on the MacBook from the external hard drive?

-does Export Mailbox[es] make a copy of the source mailboxes on the destination or move the mailboxes from source to destination?