Like many people, Max Shafiq is looking on the Apple Discussion forums for a way to import Tiger Mail messages into Leopard Mail.

Another post in the same thread notes some of the ways not to do it:

I have the same problem Max. I’ve tried importing mailboxes (from the file menu), and also dragging the old Mail folders to the new Mac’s Library… both attempts only partially successful, with most mail missing completely.

Actually, the answer is fairly simple. Just follow the method in this previous Hawk Wings’ post on importing emlx messages into Tiger Mail. Nothing’s changed.

It involves quitting Mail, making a backup, creating a new Mailbox in your ~/Library/Mail/Mailboxes folder, copying in the individual emlx files (that is, the messages) you want to import, restarting Mail, selecting the new mailbox which will appear in the list of mailboxes “On my Mac” and rebuilding it. Voilà! The messages appear, with timestamps and everything else nicely preserved.

Piece of cake. mailboxes, leopard, mail.app, apple mail, tiger mail, messages, importing, emlx

Ross at Simplehelp has written an excellent tutorial with screenshots on how to get your contact information out of the Gmail and into Address Book for use in Mail.app.

The app used in the process is called Address Book Importer , a clever utility that allows the user complete control over how to map the fields for import. It is also free for a single use (although the developer asks for a small donation if you use it regularly).

He has just released a beta version (2.0.5b3) which is a universal binary and features several fine-tuning tweaks.

The interface is clean and easy to understand:

The tutorial even tells you what to do with the mysterious “name” entry that appears when the import is finished.mail.app, apple mail, address book, gmail, contacts, importing, CSV, universal binary

KMail users looking to switch to Apple Mail now have a smarter tool to help make the transition.

Last year a poster on macOSXHints provided a script for importing KMail mailboxes into Mail.

Now another poster has produced an updated script that preserves the time stamp on the original emails.mail.app, apple mail, kmail, linux, switching, mailboxes, importing

Andreas Amann has updated his very useful Eudora Mailbox Cleaner, a utility that simplifies the process of switching from Eudora or Thunderbird to Mail.app.

In particular, the app is much smarter about importing Eudora nicknames and much better at parsing them. It no longer identifies some nicknames as mailing lists. The whole importing process is much faster.

A number of smaller tweaks make EMC more stable, especially during the initial scan of files to be imported.

There has never been a better time to switch from Eudora.

Eudora Mailbox Cleaner is freeware (donations not refused) and is available from Andrea’s web site.mail.app, apple mail. eudora, thunderbird, switching, importing, nicknames, plugins, helpful apps

Looking for a way to export your Address Book contacts into a webmail service like Gmail?

Antonio Lorè has written a simple but efficient utility that will export all your Address Book contacts into a CSV file ready for exporting into another email client or webmail service.

As you can see from the icon, he is thinking mainly of GMail, but a number of webmail services can import contacts in CSV format.

The app presents you with a simple interface:

All you need to do is select the location for the finished export and click “Export to CSV”. Easy.

A to G (formerly AddressBookToCSV) and the Swiss Brotherli web site offer the same exporting service.

Address Book to CSV Exporter is freeware and is available from the developer’s web site .gmail, csv, contacts, address book, exporting, importing

Drasko Markovic has posted a PHP script on his site that will resend all the email in an IMAP account to your Gmail account.

It can date stamp the emails and the name of the IMAP folder in which the messages are stored can be used as a Gmail label.

I wouldn’t call this a user-friendly solution, but if you have some PHP smarts, have the PHP IMAP module installed and know what you are doing, it might be an easier solution that using Gmail Loader and Thunderbird to move your Mail messages over.

Drasko makes absolutely no guarantees for its use. Neither do I.Gmail, email, importing, IMAP, PHP, script, Gmail loader

Addressbook2pine is a freeware app that converts Address Book contacts into the tab delimited .addressbook format used by pine.

During the conversion Address Book’s fields are mapped into the pine addressbook as follows:

It can also convert the other way, importing contacts from pine’s addressbook into OS X’s Address Book.

The app’s preference pane contains a number of options that make the process more flexible. For example you can customize the way nicknames are handled or how email IDs are applied:

The app is freeware although the author accepts donations and is available from the developer’s web site.