Import mail from Sierra to Mojave?

[nemofish]

Made a clean install of Mojave and looking to import my mail (85GB) I usually do this by copying my user/library/mail folder over but noticed Sierra stored this in a folder named /V5 and Mjoave uses /V6.

A quick google brings up lots of posts on Apple forums saying this doesn't work.

Is there any workaround?

 

[NoBoMac]

Been a while since I've done this for others (I keep my email accounts clean as vast majority of that stuff is not worth keeping; when worth keeping, offload to something else)...

Generally, if pulling from Time Machine, pull it in. Then in Mail, do an Import: will need to select the individual mailboxes in the old folders. Once imported, can then move the individual emails to other mailboxes. That said, from past experiences, hit/miss getting back some of the attachments.

Guessing if did a restore from TM when setting up new, would have come over ok (can exclude other stuff when setting up).

 

[jpn]

Made a clean install of Mojave and looking to import my mail (85GB) I usually do this by copying my user/library/mail folder over but noticed Sierra stored this in a folder named /V5 and Mjoave uses /V6.

A quick google brings up lots of posts on Apple forums saying this doesn't work.

Is there any workaround?

this way has worked for me, in December 2018 (using Mojave and a new MacBook Air).
it also has worked for me using other macOS and other mac machines before.
i don't know of a better way to do it, actually.
its an act of labour to do it this way, however.
my Mail folder size was similar to yrs (74GB) at the time. mail going back to 2004.
once i got it copied over to a Sandisk Flash Drive with dual USB-A / USB-C plugs, i just imported it into my Macbook Air macOS Mail. (getting 75GB onto the Flash Drive from my old machine using only USB-A was slow; getting it imported into machine 2 from the USB-C drive was very much quicker).

what didn't work for me in December 2018 and in past times as well is my set of Mail Rules.
the Mail Rules get imported fine, and the mail of course is in its folders, but i always need to re-run the Mail Rules again to get it all colour coded etc (i have complex mail rules set up...)

i also found that it best for the import to be the 1st thing done to a new mail box instead of having it added into/on top of existing arrangement of mail.

this last time around, there was one thing that was different: some Mail storage folders (apple insists on calling off-line storage type of mail folders as "Mailboxes". i prefer to call these storage locations "Folders".) would not copy into macOS Mojave. for those, i was able to copy the contents of those Folders into a Desktop folder and then import into Mail.
I dont know why the Mail import program could not "see" those 2 or 3 Folders.

the other piece of advice is that when you import, you are given 2 choices: (1) apple Mail or (2) Files that are in mbox format. although apple's Mail is in fact mbox format that way never works. I always need to choose apple Mail format.

i also found that i couldn't check all the folders at once and be sure they were all copied all into the new machine's Mail location. so i needed to check a few dozen folders and get them imported and then check a few more dozen folders, etc.

dont delete any of the original storage places you originally were keeping yr mail such as on Time Machine etc. as you need to check cursorily to make ensure everything was imported.

since the Import process only puts all imported Folders into its own Imported folder, you need to drag them out of the Imported folder into your own folder structure once they are imported.

you are correct that the name of the Mail sub-folders inside Mail changed from V5 to V6. i have not a clue why this important. but i just copy the whole "Library/Mail" folder so that its copied over in total.

i also should point out that although all my various email accounts are IMAP, i never leave anything on the server. its always downloaded into Inbox but then through the Mail Rules working on it is immediately downloaded off the server into my mac's local folders. so doing the above way doesnt have any duplicates as there is nothing on the server, except maybe new mail that was not in the flash drive folders.

 

[nemofish]

since the Import process only puts all imported Folders into its own Imported folder, you need to drag them out of the Imported folder into your own folder structure once they are imported.

you are correct that the name of the Mail sub-folders inside Mail changed from V5 two V6. have not a clue why this important. but i just copy the whole "Library/Mail" folder so that its copied over in total.

Thanks, your mail setup sounds similar to mine, it's 99% offline folders/subfolders.

Are you saying that you copy the entire mail folder over from a backup THEN point Apple Mail to that and import?

 

[jpn]

Thanks, your mail setup sounds similar to mine, it's 99% offline folders/subfolders.

Are you saying that you copy the entire mail folder over from a backup THEN point Apple Mail to that and import?

hi

1 i first drag an entire Library/Mail folder from machine 1 to a USB

2 i then use that USB as the import source for importing into Mail on machine 2

3 but when you import the mail folders, the Mail import program puts all the imported folders into a folder called Imported Mail (or something like that) at the very top.
Once all your Mail is imported into that, you just drag these folders in any hierarchical order you want within your new Mail setup. it isnt an actual copy/paste after they are imported.
its just creating the structure you want to order these folders in.
after you have moved out of the imported mail folder all your folders you delete the (now) empty Imported Mail folder.

whether you use USB or not should depend on if you have anything that might be faster to transfer to/from.
for me, as i mentioned, in my latest Mail import transfer, thanks to the new MacBook Air having USB-C, i used a really handy USB Flash Drive from Sandisk that is actually an SSD in the shape of a USB Flash Drive, with dual ends: 1 end has old format USB-A and the other end is USB-C. really handy device, once you go to a machine with USB-C.

not having a lot of other intensive disk tasks running is good in order to get the transfer process finished as quickly as possible. it takes time. and i found that it does take time.
and it might also be best to set Mail so as to not Fetch automatically new mail while this is all happening. setting mail to Get Mail only manually during this process is best - then not actually getting new mail until its all done.

also, you will need to re-index. osMail System Preferences / Spotlight / Privacy then indicating you dont want your entire Home drive indexed, then immediately after that removing that, will force the system to do a system wide re-index.
fooling around with Mail index stuff never resulted in full indexing of Mail for me, and doing the above will be better when you use Finder or Spotlight to find Mail.