Backups are important. As Joni Mitchell reminds us, “Don’t it always seem to go / that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone”.

Details about what to backup in Mail are provided in a tech note from Apple. A complete backup set of Mail includes the following:

1. All the files located in ~/Library/Mail.
2. The “Mail Downloads” folder located in ~/Library
3. The “com.apple.mail.plist” file located in ~/Library/Preferences.
4. The “AddressBook” folder located in ~/Library/Application Support

(”~” is a symbol for your user or home directory. “~/Library” is the Library folder in your home directory.)

There are at least five ways to do the backup:

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