There is no easy way to import messages in the new 10.4 format (individual XML documents with the emlx extension) into
But you can put deleted messages back (if you have them in a backup) or add news ones and force Mail to reindex them. Here’s how:
- Quit Mail.
- Make a backup of your complete ~/Library/Mail folder just in case, by Option-Dragging it out of the Finder window onto the Desktop.
- Create a new directory in your ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes folder called – for example – “backup.mbox”.
- Create a sub-folder in the new folder called “Messages”.
- Copy all the messages (emlx files) that you want to restore from your backup into that sub-folder.
- Launch
Apple Mail . The mailbox you created will be in the list of mailboxes on the left. Highlight it (it will appear empty but isn’t really) and choose “Rebuild” from Mail’s Mailbox menu. - Mail.app will rebuild and re-index the messages.
- When the process is complete you will see the messages you added in the new mailbox. You can then move them to wherever they really belong.
This has worked for me. And I double-checked it again this morning.
[...] (This tip is not quite right. Look at the updated one instead). [...]
[...] The developer claims that, However, if you need to recover from a hard drive crash, it’s almost impossible to recover your mail messages easily since Mail won’t import emlx files and you can’t add them to your mailboxes any other way. It is true that importing emlx messages is not one of the default options in Mail.app’s “Import” menu, but there is a simple work-around that will import your emlx emails without the trouble of converting them into the mbox first. [...]
Thank you!!
This helped me a lot.
Thanks. This worked perfectly. It is so strange that Mail has never been strong at importing it’s own data structures.
Excellent. Glad it helped :-)
[...] Restoring or recovering individual emails in Mail 2.0 is covered by this Hawk Wings tip. [...]
Worked perfectly , thanks for the tip
Excellent. This is one of my very few original discoveries about Mail.app.
Extra good that it works too :)
Hi,
You can also try (has worked for me) this, following the scenario described:
On a 10.3 setup, drag mailboxes to the desktop to backup and free up space.
Upgrade to 10.4 and attempt reading in these separated/backed-up mailboxes. Looking into these folders shows unix executable type files and not the enclosing mailbox folder as seen in Panther.
SOLUTION:
In Mail version 2 in Tiger, go to the File menu and select the ‘Import Mailboxes’ item and choose ‘Other’ at the bottom of the list.
This allows you to import folders including those in Panther’s mailbox format.
Thank you! This solved my problems.. great tip!
Thanks for your help. This was very useful.
Excellent tip. I wondered why my restored .emlx files didn’t just appear when I placed them back.
Thanks for saving me a lot of agony :)
Champion,
thanks for the work around, nice site design as well.
Thank you so much for this tip. Why can’t apple put this on their site? Better yet, make it so it imports without a .mbox file.
Note that there is a limit to the number of .emlx files that can be in one folder. I couldn’t get this to work until I brought the number down to below 10.000 files.
Thanks, this worked great for me too. I agree that Apple should really add this feature to Mail.app.
THANK YOU!!!!
thanks!!!! u so totally saved me here! i managed to import everything that was already in folders, but those dang inbox/sent mail emlx were just bent on being uncooperative…..^_^thanks thanks thanks!
Thanks! This has been a life saver! :)
It even meant I solved it before my hubby!
Unfortunately, this didn’t work for me. Though I put nearly 1,800 messages in the folder, the rebuild only indexes a couple dozen from one particular month. Ideas?
Hmmmmm….. trying to import Leopard emlx files into Tiger sure doesn’t work- and the converter won’t convert the Leopard emlx to mbox.
Any other ideas?
Awesome! Worked like a charm. Imported into Snow Leopard… over 10,000 messages.
Does this work for Apple Mail 10.3 or later?
Used Data Rescue 3 and this procedure to recover some deleted emails. Unfortunately had taken time machine drive out of service and repurposed it. That won’t be happening again anytime soon.
I spent an hour today trying to restore my email from an Earthlink account because I was trying to figure out a way to only get one message from my .Mac account. Even though i spent the hour with the guy, all we accomplished was setting up a new IMAP account so I get things at .me.com. Well, still getting duplicates…will work on that another day.
Bottom line is that this tip worked perfectly!!! Thank you so much!!! Using 10.4 and Mail 2.1.3.