Importing mail stuck after a migration to a new Mac

New MacBook. I used the TimeMachine backup from an external USB 3 disk to move the data from the old to the new one.

All went well. I open Mail and it starts to import mailboxes. Takes a long time. For hours it now hangs on this message:

Activity Monitor suggests that something is happening, right?

Is it worthwhile to let it like this over night? Or is this futile and should I go forward with deleting an envelope index after a forced quit and that kind of mess?

Please advice, most appreciated!

MacBook Air (2020 or later)

Posted on Oct 8, 2021 11:14 AM

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Community Specialist

Posted on Oct 9, 2021 10:40 AM

Hi ReindeR Rustema,

It looks like you're having issues with Time Machine moving your mailbox. If that's correct, you can certainly try overnight to see if it will complete.

If you continue to have issues, you may need to add the account to the new Mac and if it is an IMAP account, your email should come through.

Cheers.

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Top-ranking reply

Community Specialist

Oct 9, 2021 10:40 AM in response to ReindeR Rustema

Hi ReindeR Rustema,

It looks like you're having issues with Time Machine moving your mailbox. If that's correct, you can certainly try overnight to see if it will complete.

If you continue to have issues, you may need to add the account to the new Mac and if it is an IMAP account, your email should come through.

Cheers.

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Oct 10, 2021 09:21 AM in response to JCorHelps

Indeed, it was Time Machine having issues with my mailboxes. I solved it in a different way though:

I went to the ~/Library/ on my previous machine and copied the Mail folder to an external drive. It took ages because it was 80Gb and some 2 million files.
Disconnected the drive from the previous machine and connected to new one.
On my new, current machine I first checked the drive with Disk Utility (also took ages). It was okay.
I moved the Mail folder to the desktop and from there to ~/Library, replacing the existing one. Took some time.

I launched Mail and it immediately worked! It did not even import mailboxes.

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Importing mail stuck after a migration to a new Mac

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