Moving Mail To New Machine

[WKowalski]

Hi,
I want to copy my wife's Mail from our old Powerbook G4 to our MacBook. I have read in several places that the way to do this is to option-drag the Mail folder from the Library onto our backup drive, then copy it into the same place on the new machine. But this is not working at all. Can anyone tell me what I might be doing wrong? We are running Leopard 10.5.8 on both machines.

 

[McGiord]

You can use the Migration Assistant in your new mac to migrate your wife's user with all her data to the new mac. You just need to have both Mac's on the same network or connect them via firewire (if you old Mac has the port and you have the cable)

 

[WKowalski]

Thanks. I do have the cables and ports. Unfortunately the old Mac is having some bizarre problem where it frequently doesn't detect the keyboard. I know this is a software issue and not a hardware issue (long story) but the main thing is, I can't start it up as a hard drive by pressing T, which is what Migration Assistant requires. Is there any other way to do this than by pressing T?

 

[WKowalski]

Actually, please ignore that last question. I figured out that you can do it by going to System Preference > Startup Disk > Target Disk Mode. Now I can't get it to start normally...

 

[WKowalski]

OK, please also forget that last question too... I fixed it by zapping the PRAM. Thanks anyway.

 

[devburke]

Thanks. I do have the cables and ports. Unfortunately the old Mac is having some bizarre problem where it frequently doesn't detect the keyboard. I know this is a software issue and not a hardware issue (long story) but the main thing is, I can't start it up as a hard drive by pressing T, which is what Migration Assistant requires. Is there any other way to do this than by pressing T?

FYI, it doesn’t have to be started as a hard drive to work.

 

[WKowalski]

Thanks. I've used Migration Assistant now and it has succeeded in moving over all the various files and applications. However, it has not moved the Mail library and I am getting really confused here. I've tried this a few different ways. Everywhere I read about this, it says that copying the Mail folder is the way to do it. But none of the proper smart mailboxes are showing up, and neither are the sent or deleted emails or any of that. At this point I have no idea what to do.