That’s what I’ve done above: “Apple Mail Folders” then will let me import them onto the new system and serve as a backup too. In this case, you can easily specify an external drive, either a USB flash drive or a larger storage device. Apple Mail will prompt you to choose a destination for the folder / folders:

One of the items on that menu is “ Export Mailbox…“:ĭon’t worry about the fact that it’s singular but you are going to export multiple mailboxes (just in case you’re an English major and notice these sort of things!). I have quite a few! Now Control-click anywhere in the selected folders area to bring up the context menu. Launch Apple Mail on the old system and select all the folders you want to export by using click, then Shift-click to add to the group. Ready? HOW TO EXPORT EMAIL FOLDERS FROM APPLE MAIL Generally speaking you should have the latest versions of all your software and the OS on both, but in this instance I don’t think it’ll matter too much. mbox” format, so you could also import them into a different email program if you preferred.įor this tutorial, I’m going to go through the steps needed to export email folders from Apple Mail, then move to a different system and import them into Apple Mail on that device. As a side benefit, the exported format is in what’s known as “. Not a big problem except when people go to back up their account or copy data from one system to another, they typically ignore Library, assuming it’s nothing of critical importance.įortunately, you don’t have to muck about in the file system because the Apple Mail program has both an Export and Import facility that makes it pretty easy to migrate from one Mac to another.

Just about every program keeps user data somewhere in your Documents folder or in your Home folder itself, but Apple Mail has everything in $HOME/Library/Mail. It’s actually curious how Apple set up the email archive structure in Apple Mail.

Mac mail on my mac