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How to import an .imapmbox into Mail.app
Authored by: betsbillabong on Apr 05, '10 05:07:06PM

Hey all - I just thought I'd add what worked for me.

I had had duplicate mailboxes in my IMAP folder, and mistakenly deleted one. Big mistake! It deleted both of them. I was horrified (it was an important folder, let's call it DAD).

I did a spotlight search for some of the text in the missing emails and tracked the mailbox down. It was still in my ~user/library/mail folder, but I guessed that if I quit mail it would update (not sure here - I am not an expert at this stuff).

Anyhow, I found the imapmbox in the Imap server folder, and copied it over to the desktop. So basically I had DAD.imapmbox on my desktop. I thought I could just follow the instructions above, and rename it to DAD.mbox.

But no! I was not given 'sufficient access privileges'. I did 'get info' to change all user's permissions to 'read and write' but that didn't help. Not only could I not change the suffix, I could not change anything.

Finally, I created a new empty folder in Mail, called 'DADRESTORE'. I quit mail, cringing. I copied the files and folders from inside DAD.imapmbox into the 'DADRESTORE.mbox' folder which Mail had created ('info.plist, "attachments" and "messages"). And then I opened mail again and went to FILE -> Rebuild.

It worked! All of the emails were in the DADRESTORE folder. So if you are in a bind, try that.



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