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Importing emlx messages into Apple Mail 2.0

There is no easy way to import messages in the new 10.4 format (individual XML documents with the emlx extension) into Mail.app. It is not one of the options in Mail 2.0′s “Import” menu.

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:

  1. Quit Mail.

  2. Make a backup of your complete ~/Library/Mail folder just in case, by Option-Dragging it out of the Finder window onto the Desktop.

  3. Create a new directory in your ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes folder called – for example – “backup.mbox”.

  4. Create a sub-folder in the new folder called “Messages”.

  5. Copy all the messages (emlx files) that you want to restore from your backup into that sub-folder.

  6. 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.

  7. Mail.app will rebuild and re-index the messages.

  8. 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.mail.app, apple mail, emlx, import, messages, tip, mailboxes

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This entry was posted on Thursday, 20th October, 2005 at 8:05 am and is filed under Apple Mail, Apple Mail Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

28 Responses to “Importing emlx messages into Apple Mail 2.0”

  1. Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Recovering deleted messages in Mail 2.0 says:
    October 20th, 2005 at 8:08 am

    [...] (This tip is not quite right. Look at the updated one instead). [...]

  2. Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » An emlx to mbox converter says:
    October 20th, 2005 at 8:37 am

    [...] 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. [...]

  3. Liam says:
    November 12th, 2005 at 9:14 pm

    Thank you!!

    This helped me a lot.

  4. Jim Perry says:
    November 30th, 2005 at 3:26 pm

    Thanks. This worked perfectly. It is so strange that Mail has never been strong at importing it’s own data structures.

  5. Tim says:
    November 30th, 2005 at 8:50 pm

    Excellent. Glad it helped :-)

  6. Hawk Wings » Blog Archive » Backing up and restoring mailboxes in Mail 2.0 says:
    December 5th, 2005 at 10:21 am

    [...] Restoring or recovering individual emails in Mail 2.0 is covered by this Hawk Wings tip. [...]

  7. Tom says:
    January 31st, 2006 at 12:39 pm

    Worked perfectly , thanks for the tip

  8. Tim says:
    January 31st, 2006 at 3:16 pm

    Excellent. This is one of my very few original discoveries about Mail.app.

    Extra good that it works too :)

  9. Chris Hopkins says:
    February 16th, 2006 at 1:47 am

    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.

  10. Dóri says:
    April 26th, 2006 at 11:38 pm

    Thank you! This solved my problems.. great tip!

  11. paul says:
    July 19th, 2006 at 12:30 am

    Thanks for your help. This was very useful.

  12. Bodog says:
    August 22nd, 2006 at 1:40 am

    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 :)

  13. Conrad says:
    November 8th, 2006 at 11:53 pm

    Champion,

    thanks for the work around, nice site design as well.

  14. andreas says:
    December 13th, 2006 at 6:19 pm

    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.

  15. Johan Kool says:
    February 14th, 2007 at 9:17 am

    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.

  16. Perrin Meyer says:
    May 16th, 2007 at 7:48 am

    Thanks, this worked great for me too. I agree that Apple should really add this feature to Mail.app.

  17. Kate says:
    January 17th, 2008 at 4:12 am

    THANK YOU!!!!

  18. michimon says:
    June 12th, 2008 at 8:06 pm

    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!

  19. lish says:
    July 29th, 2008 at 5:01 am

    Thanks! This has been a life saver! :)

    It even meant I solved it before my hubby!

  20. Wayne says:
    August 15th, 2008 at 1:55 am

    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?

  21. Ziska says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 2:05 am

    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?

  22. Eli says:
    October 28th, 2009 at 10:51 am

    Awesome! Worked like a charm. Imported into Snow Leopard… over 10,000 messages.

  23. mpatel says:
    November 18th, 2009 at 9:46 am

    Does this work for Apple Mail 10.3 or later?

  24. schoplmd says:
    November 19th, 2009 at 11:33 pm

    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.

  25. Lea says:
    November 26th, 2009 at 12:45 pm

    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.

  26. Amy says:
    February 7th, 2010 at 8:04 am

    THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! I’ve just managed to import all my messages which I spent two hours thinking I had lost forever and then found on my back-up. Your advice was spot on, I can’t thank you enough. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!!

  27. Chris Burke says:
    July 1st, 2010 at 9:29 am

    Wow, thank you. I ended up only losing 1 week of email which Apple is trying to get back from the server on MobileMe.

    Hawkwings+TimeMachine=Happiness.

  28. Alma says:
    August 22nd, 2010 at 3:02 pm

    After reading a lot, downloading the converter, it was all for nothing, Until I found your answer. You rock!!!!!

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