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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Mail and Address Book retrieval

draf - Feb 6, 2006 - 11:18 am

I had to re-load my operating system. I'm again running 10.3.9 and need help retrieving old emails from Mail in my previous system folder. I also need to retrieve old address from Address Book.

Can anyone help?

azsooner - Feb 6, 2006 - 11:38 am

This is a pretty easy task.

For your AddressBook simply navigate to your old user Library and point yourself to the Application Support folder. In there you will find a folder named AddressBook. Simply drag the folder or the contents of the folder to your new user that you setup after you re-install. It will have the same structure as your previous setup.

As for the Mail folder, you can perform the same techique as described above or the method that I prefer, starting fresh. Lanch your new mail application, enter your account information, and import your old mail with the Import feature in the Mail client.

Hope this helps.

Andrew

draf - Feb 6, 2006 - 12:20 pm

Andrew,

Thanks for replying. I will go attempt these right now.

draf - Feb 6, 2006 - 12:56 pm

Andrew,

Thanks. My Address Book is now as it was before my re-install.

I wasn't very successful in figuring out the Mail suggestion you had.

Could you explain it for me?

thanks,
Shawn

azsooner - Feb 6, 2006 - 1:02 pm

Open your Mail program and setup everything again if it asks. You should now have brand new set of mail preferences. Quit, and relaunch one more time (I have found that for some reason it works better this way when you are importing mail). Go to the Mailbox Import under File. Navigate to your old mail folder (it's tucked away inside the same Library folder that you found the AddressBook in and import your old mail. There may be a couple of different folders to import, no big deal.

Once you are done, you will see the imported mail in your drawer. You can drag it to where ever you want and return to business as usual.

draf - Feb 6, 2006 - 1:09 pm

I tried and a message letting me know that no valid mbox files were available.

have I lost all my emails from the previous system set up?

azsooner - Feb 6, 2006 - 1:21 pm

I've uploaded some screen shots. Do you see something similar to this? You may not have gone far enough in the Mail folder when tried importing. You have to click on the actual folder named Mailboxes for it to import. Also you may have a secondary mailbox with your email address in the name. This needs to be imported as well.

If this whole mess is confusing you, just drag the Mail folder into your Library folder and replace the new the was created from you install. Like I stated before, importing is my preferred method since it eliminates garbage from your previous email folders.

draf - Feb 6, 2006 - 1:30 pm

Andrew,

Your screen shots look just like where I was.

Only problem may be that I only had a file named "MessageSorting.plist" in the Mail folder. That was it, just that file.

azsooner - Feb 6, 2006 - 1:38 pm

Huh!? And you are sure that you are looking in your old Mail folder? You didn't mess with any of you old data when you re-installed did you?

draf - Feb 6, 2006 - 1:49 pm

I'm looking right where you let me know to look (I actually have two "previous system" folders, I had to re-install twice because after the first re-install I had a screen come up each time I re-started wanting a password to login, and I hadn't ever been given the opportunity to set a password. Since I couldn't login, I re-installed again, all the way from jaguar to panther).
And I didn't mess with any of the files. Only one of the previous systems even has a "library" folder in the users area.

Can't think of anything except that I was having many problems with Mail "not responding" before the re-install.

azsooner - Feb 6, 2006 - 2:01 pm

FYI - on the password thing. If you don't know or have forgotten your password, there is an option when booted from the install CD to reset you passwords.

As for your Mail folder, I'm running out of things to suggest. Have you tried doing a search for the name "Mail"? This may help you locate the missing folder. However, if it is the same folder that you found your AddressBook info in, then it should also reside in that same Library folder too.