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
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.
Tags: Apple Mail, emlx, import, mail.app, mailboxes, messages, tipRelated posts
October 20th, 2005 at 8:08 am
[...] (This tip is not quite right. Look at the updated one instead). [...]
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. [...]
November 12th, 2005 at 9:14 pm
Thank you!!
This helped me a lot.
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.
November 30th, 2005 at 8:50 pm
Excellent. Glad it helped :-)
December 5th, 2005 at 10:21 am
[...] Restoring or recovering individual emails in Mail 2.0 is covered by this Hawk Wings tip. [...]
January 31st, 2006 at 12:39 pm
Worked perfectly , thanks for the tip
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 :)
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.
April 26th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Thank you! This solved my problems.. great tip!
July 19th, 2006 at 12:30 am
Thanks for your help. This was very useful.
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 :)
November 8th, 2006 at 11:53 pm
Champion,
thanks for the work around, nice site design as well.
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.
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.
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.
January 17th, 2008 at 4:12 am
THANK YOU!!!!
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!
July 29th, 2008 at 5:01 am
Thanks! This has been a life saver! :)
It even meant I solved it before my hubby!