Cannot Move Mail in Mail.app between Accounts

[tekfranz]

I have connected both iCloud, Yahoo Mail and an Archival V5 MBOX Mailboxes to Mac Mail.
I am trying to migrate old emails iCloud to Yahoo Mail for its unlimited storage.

However the when I tell a group of messages to move to the new Mail Box Mail.app acts like it is preparing for the move but the messages actually never get moved.
It doesn't matter if I highlight them and select Move or Drag and Drop Them.

This seems like a serious bug in Mail.app.

Anyone have any ideas or workarounds? I am going to try AirMail in the meantime and their Message "Cloning" feature which can move emails between Mailboxes.
I would have done the migration via Outlook and a PST file but the mail I need is in the Archival MBOX .emlx file type.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Can you make the same move in the other direction (as a test)? I don't know if Yahoo email is particular about it, but some providers don't like being bombarded with activity.

 

[tekfranz]

Can you make the same move in the other direction (as a test)? I don't know if Yahoo email is particular about it, but some providers don't like being bombarded with activity.

Yes that is a good point. It would seem like i should be able to add messages to an iMap folder without it needing to make calls to the mail server but maybe it is restricted in some way.

It has been a bit of a challenge migrating between the two Mailboxes even in AirMail, but AirMail seems to be doing well at it.Here is what the process looks like in AirMail:
http://docs.airmailapp.com/airmail-for-mac/rules-in-airmail-airmail-for-macos
You actually use Mail rules to migrate Previous Messages.

Hopefully Apple fixes moving Mail Messages in the Mail App.

 

[BrianBaughn]

When you move the message to an IMAP folder of a different account using any client the message has to be uploaded to the server.

 

[tekfranz]

When you move the message to an IMAP folder of a different account using any client the message has to be uploaded to the server.

You know you might be right about each message needing to be uploaded. AirMail sped the copy up and then upgrading to Yahoo Mail Plus helped even more....

Only question I have is if I do the same procedure in Outlook it takes very little time to move large amounts of messages between accounts...maybe Outlook just makes a cache them somewhere and then upload them because the copy in Microsoft Outlook happens almost instantly in some cases.

 

[tekfranz]

Migrating & Copying Mail & Mailboxes between Accounts in Mac Mail


I just had some thought about best practices for moving messages between accounts using the Mac Mail App.

The Reason to Move Mail

One reason is that might want to migrate messages from an Office365 or Gmail to an iCloud Account. Outlook on Windows allows you to Import and Export PST Files at will which makes mailbox migration a cinch. However on Windows importing a PST file with a large numbers of emails can cause iCloud to throttle or ban you especially if you have a large PST. But since we are using a Mac and iCloud lets see if we can get this done without Windows.

Things to Keep in Mind

Mac Mail is slow and queues up move jobs in the background. You can see these jobs once they are in progress by going to Mail -> Window Activity and checking win the lower right hand corner. Also the Mac Mail App is file based so the emails are stored in files in ~/Users/Library/Mail/V6.



Some Methods to Try

• Shrink the mailbox you are copying from first. Use an App like clean.emailor Mailstrom to shrink your mailbox to manageable size so your are not copying Multiple Gigabytes of emails.
• If you are using Office365 or Exchange, configure Mail to use IMAP for retrieving emails instead. You will need to set ups the account as "Other and enter your IMAP credentials.
• Have Patience. Wait for Mail to Queue up the Job and perform it. You also may be waiting on the iMap Server.
• I find that dragging and dropping from Mailbox to the other works best.
• Create local "On My Mac" Mailbox as a holding area for the emails you are moving to the new account. The "On My Mac" folder is like a staging area.That way only 1 imap Server is in play at a time. Move your emails from the original account to the On My Mac folder. Once that copy completes move the emails to the new account.
• Only drag and drop several hundred emails at one time not thousands.
• Closing Mac Mail Aborts the process and allows you start over. Closing can be helpful if the moving process gets stuck.
• If the drag and drop does not work the first time try it again.
• Also try splitting your mail up into sub-folders since a folder you made might accept a copy sooner than a system folder like Inbox or Sent.
• Also try Exporting the Mail as an MBOX file and reopening it and mounting it the Mail Folder tree. From there you can copy out the emails.
• Try AirMailand use Mailbox rules to move the messages.

I hope this helps and that the next version of Mail has better migration tools in place.