Clean install without migrating

[Howard Brazee]

Tomorrow, we will order my wife's new iMac which will take a couple of weeks to get to the Mac Store. (We want 2T storage).

We've worked at getting her old 27" iMac working for a couple of weeks now, including two erases, but it still is very, very slow and has panic crashes. So we want to rebuild on her new computer safely:

I plan on updating her Carbon Copy Clone so that we can find stuff we miss, and not copying any programs across. We will copy documents.

But I have a couple of questions:

After logging into her iCloud account and setting it up, but before running mail, I'm thinking I should copy her library\mail folder over, so that all of the mail folders will be there. Do you agree that this is a good idea?

After her computer is set up, I will connect her Time Machine. Should I erase it and start over?

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hi,

Sometimes copying the Mail folder over doesn't populate mail properly, especially if the versions of macOS/Mail are very different. Are her emails stored locally in folders in the On My Mac section, or in folders in iCloud - can she see them on other devices? If in iCloud, they will resync.

You could always use the Export/Import function in Mail for each mailbox to export them onto an external and then import them when Mail is setup, as that will definitely work. Depends on the number of mailboxes however.

I would update the CCC and TM backups, setup the new iMac, then probably go ahead and erase and start from scratch with the old iMac.

C

 

[Howard Brazee]

Her old Intel iMac has Ventura 13.0.1. Her iPhone's mail doesn't show all of the folders that her Mac mail has. On her Mac, all of those folders show under "iCloud", but when we were trying to fix the problems on her old Mac, twice we wiped it. When we looked at mail after wiping, all of the mail folders were gone, but all of the mail appeared to load (probably), just not in folders.

 

[TonyAguila]

Her old Intel iMac has Ventura 13.0.1. Her iPhone's mail doesn't show all of the folders that her Mac mail has. On her Mac, all of those folders show under "iCloud", but when we were trying to fix the problems on her old Mac, twice we wiped it. When we looked at mail after wiping, all of the mail folders were gone, but all of the mail appeared to load (probably), just not in folders.

If you are using Apple Mail and all of your internet accounts, not just Apple iCloud, show up in Apple Mail, all of that information should be mirrored to your iCloud storage, assuming you have enough. Once you get your new Mac and migrated your data from either Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner, theoretically all of the previous data and settings should be identical on the new Mac. In fact, even if you postpone the migration step for later, as long as your Apple ID is set up, you can start Apple Mail and all of your previous data will automatically imported from iCloud.

In by case, all of my internet accounts are set up through iCloud—Apple, Gmail, Comcast, Yahoo!. AOL, and Pair. I don't have to worry about them separately because once I start Mail with my Apple ID on any new Mac or volume, all are immediately updated on the new system.

By the way, macOS 13.1 should be released any day now. If you happen to receive your new iMac sooner and it happens to still have 13.0.1 on it, I suggest you do the update before migration.

 

[Howard Brazee]

I was expecting that she would get her mail. It's probably safer, even if she doesn't have the folders that the emails have been stored in.

 

[TonyAguila]

I was expecting that she would get her mail. It's probably safer, even if she doesn't have the folders that the emails have been stored in.

I have given up trying to understand the maze of locations where Mail data is kept, let alone keeping track of where all the related files are located, and just assumed that the restoration process will keep everything intact. Fortunately, after more than 30 years using Macs, I have yet to experience a disaster, serious or otherwise, with Mail.