Comments on: Restore IMAP data from Mail’s offline imapmbox backup

By: Bronwyn

Bronwyn — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 05:09:09 +0000

Many many thanks. Worked a treat. Had thought to rename to mbox but got nervous incase really messed up things. Much appreciated.

By: Bjoern

Bjoern — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:58:42 +0000

Thank you so much! – I accidentally deletet an folder on the imap-Server. I’ve tried hours, but with this, I could restore it within Minutes… – Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

By: Andrew Jung

Andrew Jung — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 23:19:03 +0000

I tried this for my mobileme account but it didn’t import anything. It creates an Import folder with my INBOX and Sent Messages, but I look inside and it is empty. But when I go to the folder I see a folder in each of the .mbox (previously .imapbox) and see my messages in the folder CachedMessages titled 1, 2, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.partial, 5, 6, 7, etc. to 24. there is also a info.plist, mbox.SKindex and mbox.SKindex.isValid. That is all, there are no Messages folder with .elmx files in them, so I have a feeling that this was made with an earlier version of Mail.app or something. Any way to get these back into mail?

Cheers, aj

By: paul

paul — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 03:37:21 +0000

Awesome! Thank you for this tip. It saved me.

By: natevw

natevw — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 23:04:52 +0000

Handy shell script and tips, thanks Nick!

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 16:46:08 +0000

and, for if one has many folders to rename, this will help for i in * ; do mv “$i” `basename “$i” .imapmbox`.mbox ; done

By: Nick

Nick — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 13:52:25 +0000

Natevw: You’re my hero. I was conversing idly while using Pine and hitting “Y” instead of “N” (multitaskers beware!) and deleted a bunch of sent-mail. This solution works brilliantly for recovering IMAP from the local cache (that I happened to have on a backup drive!). W00t! Thanks for publishing this solution. For those interested, the Pine option in .pinerc to disable the “do you want to delete to save disk space is pruning-rule=ask-no instead of pruning-rule=ask-yes

By: natevw

natevw — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:49:11 +0000

Glad this could be of help to a few others too!

By: Mark Barner

Mark Barner — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 10:30:47 +0000

Wow thanks man! You saved my ass… somehow a folder on my MobileMe account inside Mail got deleted and luckily i have installed “Email Backup” which is an old app that has now changed name to “Email Backup Pro” and costs money.

My Email Backup has backed up my imap folders and with your guide i retrieved them… :-) thanks!

By: Peter

Peter — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:06:07 +0000

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU