Hi Danny, I think you need to retrieve your mail preferences from your Time Machine backup to get them organized. There's a chapter in the Take Control of Apple Mail in Mountain Lion (or Lion, or Snow Leopard) guide on "Back Up and Restore Your Email". It describes multiple ways to do this. There's also a description of what files get used for different purposes. (The initial tilde character indicates these are folders under your user account): ~/Library/Mail: This folder contains all your mailboxes, rules, junk mail settings and most of the other data Mail uses. ~/Library/Keychains: This folder contains all your keychains, which store your user names and passwords. ~/Library/Application Support/AddressBook: This folder contains your Address Book contacts and your Previous Recipients list. ~/Library/Preferences: This folder contains your preference files, among which is the one Mail uses.
I think the preference file you need from your account's Library/Preferences folder is "com.apple.mail.plist" (without the quotes). Usually either this file and maybe a "com.apple.mail.plist.locked" folder is present. (If your mail is "locked" you won't be able to open it, so try deleting that folder). When you created a new Mail with your fresh install, a default com.apple.mail.plist file was created with none of your old information, so you want to replace this. I would first try making sure that the Library/Preferences folder for your account is back in place. You'll need to use the Command-Shift-G "Go to Folder" shortcut in Finder to navigate to your libraries, since by default your top level Libraries are hidden, then type or paste in the location you want to move to. You can either first use Command-Shift-H to move to your home directory, and then type in "Library" slash "Preferences" with no leading characters, or you can type in tilde, slash, "Library", slash "Preferences" into the "Go to folder" text box dialog window to move to this library under your user account from any location. (I'm typing out the characters "tilde" and "slash" so you don't have to read character by character; the same principles apply to all the other folders mentioned above -- "tilde" "slash" with no spaces between is synonymous to your user account's home directory, as though I'd typed "/Users/danny/", if that's your user account name.) I think, according to the Take Control guide, that if all the above files are in place on your fresh installed Mac, that your mail should work as before. I also think that you can copy them from a recent backup or clone. (I always keep a bootable clone around for these purposes -- doesn't have to be the latest version, but just good enough to keep a working version of your setup, and I copy the files for keychain, addressbook, and preferences over from there.) There's also a way that they describe to recover from a Time Machine backup, but it's more involved. You have to navigate to each one of the items your want to restore in Mail -- say, your Inbox, for example. Then you have to start Time Machine, navigate to one of your backups, and find the items you want to restore. Mail then creates a new local mailbox in the sidebar and creates a folder of "Recovered Messages" within the new mailbox. You then have to go through and reorganize things so that each of the "Recovered" folders are in the correct place in your real mailbox. This would place duplicates of your mailbox content on your machine, so it's really better if you can just recover your previous configuration rather than relying on the backup. I would first try to restore just the additional files I mentioned, starting with the mail preferences file, and deleting any locked mail plist file that may be present now in the library. You might consider getting the Take Control of Apple Mail in Mountain Lion guide if you want more detailed information. It's really good for practical things like this kind of recovery. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Oct 28, 2012, at 12:07, Danny Noonan wrote: > Like I feared, my mbp had ml fresh installed. I copied my saved mail folder > over the auto generated one as described and now, I have 1800 new messages, > none of the folders they belong in, no access to 99.9% of them, no way to > send and perhaps no way to receive and almost all menu options greyed out > including the ability to quit mail. > > Not quite what I expected. Any suggestions greatfully accepted. I have the > backed up mail folder and a time machine external backup of the old boot > drive. > > Thanks, > Danny > <--- Mac Access At Mac Access Dot Net ---> To reply to this post, please address your message to mac-access@mac-access.net You can find an archive of all messages posted to the Mac-Access forum at either the list's own dedicated web archive: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/pipermail/mac-access/index.html> or at the public Mail Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/>. Subscribe to the list's RSS feed from: <http://www.mail-archive.com/mac-access@mac-access.net/maillist.xml> The Mac-Access mailing list is guaranteed malware, spyware, Trojan, virus and worm-free! Please remember to update your membership options periodically by visiting the list website at: <http://mail.tft-bbs.co.uk/mailman/listinfo/mac-access/options/>
