Moving emails from 2015 MBP to 2020 M1 MB Air.

[Loa]

Hello,

We just bought a refurbished M1 macbook air for my wife. She'll be migrating from a 2015 MBP (still running 10.13).

Just about everything went fine during the migration except for her emails. Her mail app is a mess of folders and she's running 5 emails adresses.

Is there an easy way to mugrate all of those old emails to the new mac (which is running Mac OS 11, obviously).

Thanks!

 

[NoBoMac]

Migration assistant should have handled that.

If the accounts are IMAP, should transfer over from the mail provider as was.

Can try to do a Time Machine backup of the old Mac and then try to restore from the backup the "Mail" folder under the old account's Library folder on the new Mac.

 

[Fishrrman]

Here's my suggestion.
No promises.
Might work.

Go to the OLD 2015 MBP.
Navigate to:
home folder/library/mail

Copy the "mail" folder to an external drive of some sort (hard drive, USB flashdrive, etc.).

Take that and connect it to the NEW m1 MacBook.

Now, open her Mail.app on the new MacBook.
Go to the file menu and choose "Import Mailboxes"

Start "clicking through".
I'm pretty sure you'll want to choose
"Import data from --> Apple Mail".

When you click "continue", it will open a dialog asking you to point to WHERE the files/mailboxes are that you want to import.

Navigate to the external drive.
I'd try clicking the "Mail" folder first.
That might import everything, but.... if that doesn't work, you'll have to "go into" the Mail folder and direct Mail.app to each mailbox.

This will take a little time.
I SUGGEST YOU KEEP HANDWRITTEN NOTES as you along.

Once you get the mailboxes imported into Mail on the new MacBook, she will probably have to go in and start "arranging and moving" things to her liking.

 

[Loa]

Thanks for the two suggestions.

I had decided to migrate manually becasue of the huge difference between OS. I might try the method suggested by Fishrrman first.

 

[jdelgado]

Here's my suggestion.
No promises.
Might work.

Go to the OLD 2015 MBP.
Navigate to:
home folder/library/mail

Copy the "mail" folder to an external drive of some sort (hard drive, USB flashdrive, etc.).

Take that and connect it to the NEW m1 MacBook.

Now, open her Mail.app on the new MacBook.
Go to the file menu and choose "Import Mailboxes"

Start "clicking through".
I'm pretty sure you'll want to choose
"Import data from --> Apple Mail".

When you click "continue", it will open a dialog asking you to point to WHERE the files/mailboxes are that you want to import.

Navigate to the external drive.
I'd try clicking the "Mail" folder first.
That might import everything, but.... if that doesn't work, you'll have to "go into" the Mail folder and direct Mail.app to each mailbox.

This will take a little time.
I SUGGEST YOU KEEP HANDWRITTEN NOTES as you along.

Once you get the mailboxes imported into Mail on the new MacBook, she will probably have to go in and start "arranging and moving" things to her liking.

I did something similar when migrating from a 2015 MBP to a new MBP (16in 2019). But instead of copying emails, I exported every mailbox, copied them and then imported with mail into the new MBP.
This worked OK.

 

[Ruggy]

I guess you don't use icloud because is you have backed up to icloud then it will set up all the email addresses for you and all of your mail will just appear automatically within about 40 minutes. I did this recently and I was surprised at how smoothly it worked.
You get 5gb free anyway or you could could take a plan and cancel it next month so it would only cost you a couple of dollars.

 

[Loa]

I guess you don't use icloud because is you have backed up to icloud then it will set up all the email addresses for you and all of your mail will just appear automatically within about 40 minutes. I did this recently and I was surprised at how smoothly it worked.
You get 5gb free anyway or you could could take a plan and cancel it next month so it would only cost you a couple of dollars.

Interesting. Hadn't thought of that. thanks!