Help - Migrate Mail from Catalina HD to clean Big Sur install

[kkinto]

HI. I am trying to migrate my Mail from a Catalina HD to a clean install of Big Sur. I do not want to use Migration Assistant because it copies everything. I just want to move Mail (and Books and Photos and iTunes) across. Photos and iTunes have been no problem since they allow you to point to location. Perfect. Mail and Books are another story. But for now, just getting Mail back to the way it was on Catalina would be awesome. But for the life of me I cannot get it right. BSur mail always opens up with only iCloud accounts and rest of accounts blank.

What I tried:
1. copy ~/Library/Mail and ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail-shared.plist. Doesn't Work
2. Import mailboxes: I lose all groupings and folder structure, have no account differentiated "Sent" box, just a big mess to sort out - BUT it gets stuff in. However there are years of mails here and losing organization is a nightmare.

What do I copy over and to where to get Mail to load up just as it had in Catalina?

Thanks....

 

[Piana]

I would like to do the exact same thing...

Can anyone help please ?

 

[profdraper]

Rebuild it. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mail/mail35552/mac

 

[Piana]

Rebuild it. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/mail/mail35552/mac

Thanks for the answer ! But I'm not that good at computer science, and I'm not sure to know what files to copy (and where ?) and how to rebuild the mailbox... If you can explain with details, it would be great ! Thanks again !

 

[profdraper]

The link is to Apple support (READ) and/or raise a support ticket with them.
Otherwise, try this: move the ~/Library/Mail folder to the Desktop then launch Mail & let it rebuild.

 

[Piana]

The link is to Apple support (READ) and/or raise a support ticket with them.
Otherwise, try this: move the ~/Library/Mail folder to the Desktop then launch Mail & let it rebuild.

I'm confused ... Rebuilding isn't as easy for me as it is for you.. I don't know how to do it...

 

[VideoFreek]

Here's a walkthrough of the process...near the end they also cover how to rebuild a mailbox:

https://www.lifewire.com/transfer-apple-mail-to-new-mac-2260915

What the OP describes under "what I tried" #1 was nearly correct, except they copied the wrong preference file. Navigate to the ~/Library/Preferences folder as described in the article, and then be sure to copy com.apple.mail.plist, not com.apple.mail-shared.plist.

You may also run into permissions issues; the article covers how to fix those.

Good luck!

 

[Piana]

Here's a walkthrough of the process...near the end they also cover how to rebuild a mailbox:

https://www.lifewire.com/transfer-apple-mail-to-new-mac-2260915

What the OP describes under "what I tried" #1 was nearly correct, except they copied the wrong preference file. Navigate to the ~/Library/Preferences folder as described in the article, and then be sure to copy com.apple.mail.plist, not com.apple.mail-shared.plist.

You may also run into permissions issues; the article covers how to fix those.

Good luck!

Thank you ! In the article, they say "it applies to Macs running OS X Lion (10.7) through macOS Catalina (10.15)".

Will it work too from MacOS Catalina (On an old Macbook) to MacOS BigSur (On the new Macbook with Apple M1 processor) ?

 

[Piana]

Does anyone know ?
And is it possible to transfer the mail autofill data ?

Really sorry for all these questions that probably seem stupid to you...

 

[VideoFreek]

Thank you ! In the article, they say "it applies to Macs running OS X Lion (10.7) through macOS Catalina (10.15)".

Will it work too from MacOS Catalina (On an old Macbook) to MacOS BigSur (On the new Macbook with Apple M1 processor) ?

Great question. Yeah, the article was written earlier this year, as I recall, before Big Sur came out. This procedure should still work, however. I notice that on my Big Sur installation, there is no com.apple.mail.plist file in Library---->Preferences, but apparently this is not a big deal if you are missing it. What I would suggest is the following:

On your Big Sur installation:

• Shut down Mail
• Back up the existing Library/Mail folder just in case you need to restore it
• Copy over the Mail folder from your old machine, as well as the .plist file if it exists
• Restart Mail and see if it works!

Good luck.

 

[Piana]

The thing that questions me is that, on Catalina, I can't find the com.apple.mail.plist file in ~/Library/Preferences. But I find it in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Preferences

Is it the same file ? Should I replace it on the new MacBook Pro ? At the same place ?

 

[VideoFreek]

I don't know. I notice on my Big Sur installation that there are several in the Library/Containers folder--they seem to be proliferating. I think this file just holds application preferences for Mail, so if you don't copy it I think it will be rebuilt. I'd just try to copy the Mail folder and see if that works.

 

[Piana]

This is what kkinto said me in PM:

Hi - I couldn't get it to work by copying folders or the .plist files. Every time I opened the new Mail App it was "welcome to mail" and nothing in except iCloud account.

So basically I opened Mail in Big Sur and created all the accounts again and sent a test mail to have Mail create the Inbox/Sent items for each of the accounts.

Then through File->Import Mailbox... I imported the stuff in the "V7" Folder in the Mail folder, folder by folder. Then I selected the applicable Inbox or Sent box of the imported folders and selected all and dragged them to the corresponding Inbox that was newly created.


Essentially buiding it one by one!! Really painful but it worked although this created quite a few duplicates.

Eventually I kinda had what I used to have on Catalina. Wish it could have been easier :/ used to just be copying the Library-Mail folder and the mail preferences. But no longer.

When I ask if it if it would be not easier to replace the entire ~/Library/Mail folder on Big Sur with the Catalina one, kkinto says:

Nope, that didnt work at all. Changed the folder name to V8 and made files all unreadable in Catalina, but nothing appeared in BigSur Mail - just the "Welcome to Mail" and emptiness except for iCloud.

Should I try ? And if it doesn't work, what should I do ?

 

[Piana]

If I install Big Sur on my old Macbookpro, wouldn't it be easier to migrate Maill from the old macbookpro to the new one with the chipM1 processor ?
Sorry again for all these questions ... I hope you can at least answer this one, after I stop bothering you.

 

[Piana]

Guys, I'm lost, please help me...

 

[VideoFreek]

Sorry to leave you hanging--it was a hellish week at work!

OK, let's get back to your issue. What would help me is to understand exactly what you are trying to do. I ask because what occurs to me is that Migration Assistant should take care of moving the mail for you, and would be the easiest approach. My understanding is that you have an older MacBook, and you seek to move your mail to a new M1 machine. Is there some reason why Migration Assistant won't work for you?

 

[Piana]

Thanks for your answer ! Yes that's it ! I have an old MacbookPro (from 2015 with MacOS Catalina), and I want to migrate Mail from this old MacBookPro to the new MacBook Pro M1. I don't want to go through the migration assistant, because it's a process that doesn't allow you to choose what you want to transfer and I had fiddled with the Terminal a lot. So I want to manually transfer mail. And I'm trying to figure out how to do it. Would installing Big Sur on the old MacBook help ?

 

[VideoFreek]

I’ve not personally done a manual migration with Big Sur, so I really don’t want to lead you astray. With your new M1 MBP, you get 90 days of tech support, so I would suggest you contact Apple tech support and ask them to walk you through the process. Alternatively, you could make a Genius Bar appointment and ask them to do it for you. Good luck!

 

[t0pher]

kkinto, Piana

did you ever get a full answer to this?

 

[Piana]

Hi,
No I didn't have any full answer... My e-mails were also stored on my mail server, so they came back down normally.
And for my old mailbox which was saved, I just exported it and then reimported it...

 

[t0pher]

Thanks for letting me know Piana

this is what I did

• created a new admin account
• created a new admin group added the needed admin accounts and added to the old admin account /users folder
  
  
• logged out the old and into the new admin account, opened system prefs control clicked the name of the old account and changed the account name and name of its home directory to #2 its uid was 504. deleted the account with uid 501 rebooted, created a new account which got 501 and added to the admin group.
• manually copied docs, photos, music, iMessages, delved into containers and copied all the mail items too which may not have been wise.
• I then logged into the new admin account on 501 and opened the old admin /users/#2 folder
• every folder I wanted to move across I added my new admin account and applied to enclosed items while removing the old admin account. I had a brain wave to speed things up to just do that on the root of the old #2 admin user, I realised I would add read only for everyone but was too late!!
• copied it all across any way
• rebooted into recovery
• reset permissions
• rebooted and all permissions on the Apple default folders in the new primary admin account look as they should with the new admin account read write, and everyone no access.
• other folders I manually created in the root of users have the staff, the old admin account & everyone read only but is not to hard to fix amend those attributes in finder.

so far all is looking ok, photos, music and messages are ok, I enabled iCloud for docs and desktop and that is now uploading, consuming cpu too, but the machine is far more useable now than it was before.

Also mail downloaded all my historical mails from gmail, iCloud etc so I likely never needed to copy them across, I did need to re add all my iCloud accounts, gmail accounts needed reenabling but no adding passwords.

 

[mr_shaa]

t0pher, that what worked for me:

1. Copy ~/Library/Mail
2. Copy ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
3. Copy ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail-shared.plist
4. Copy ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail
5. Copy ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.mail
6. Copy ~/Library/Accounts - that what actually did the trick

P.S. Also, before migration to new SSD, I've updated my Catalina to Big Sur.

 

[edgibney]

t0pher, that what worked for me:

1. Copy ~/Library/Mail
2. Copy ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist
3. Copy ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail-shared.plist
4. Copy ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail
5. Copy ~/Library/Group Containers/group.com.apple.mail
6. Copy ~/Library/Accounts - that what actually did the trick

P.S. Also, before migration to new SSD, I've updated my Catalina to Big Sur.

This worked almost perfectly for me! I migrated from an old MacBook Air running Big Sur to a new MacBook Air running Monterrey. The new OS changes a folder in ~Library/Mail from V8 to V9. When I copied in the folder as V8, it didn't work. When I renamed it V9 before copying it over, then it worked! Cheers.