Tiger - moving mail from an 10.3 Mail.app

Apple - Mac OS X

There are several ways to move Mail.app data into Tiger when switching machines. You can use Apple's data migration utility, but I prefer to move more gradually. (Mail.app data structures changed in Tiger to fit Spotlight.)

I logged in on my Tiger account and copied all my ~/Library/Mail files to the new machine. Then I tried two approaches. The second is better:

1. Fire up Mail.app. Create a new account. Import old content using the built-in import function. This brings in only mailbox data.

2. Delete everything in ~/Library/Mail on the new machine (eg. data from #1). Copy the Mail files from old machine in here. Start Mail.app. It imports mail and configuration data.


At first I created a new mailbox and used the Mail.app import function to imp