Email recovery assistance. Advice wanted.

[andrewc]

My sisters old Windows 7 PC died & she's replaced it with an iMac.   I set it up for her yesterday & all is working OK.


The Apple email app downloaded her most recent emails, however she had several years of old emails on the old machine and she'd like to have access to those if possible. 


I've got her old hard drive working in an external caddy, so all the files are on there somewhere. 


What's the simplest way to find them & transfer them across ?  I don't have a Windows machine available, when I look in Finder I can see various folders but can't work out where the emails are stored.  Would the Apple mail client be able to read them or would I need to install Outlook ?

[Kim]

The simplest way to migrate email from an old mail client is to configure an IMAP server on it and copy them all to that.

But since that depends on a live system, you're going to need something that can read whatever format her previous mail client stored mail locally as.  You suggest that she was using Outlook, which has an annoying proprietary format (PST files), but since it's a Microsoft thing, it might be one that something else can work with...

[Feanor]

Need more details.
It depends where the mail is currently residing.

What kind of email account is it?
Is it one of the big services like gmail or something?
Did the Apple mail app pretty much self configure itself based on the email address you gave it?

Its possible the mail is all currently sitting on an imap server.
Ive never used the Apple mail app, but many mail apps (particularly mobile ones) will only download the most recent 50 or so.
There might be an option in the mail app to Download All Messages.

If the mail is sitting on the old PC having been downloaded from a POP3 server, then you need to extract them from the files on the disk.
That requires knowledge of what mail app was being used on the Win 7 machine.
Different apps store their mail in different places.

But I suspect that wont be necessary.
I suspect the mail *is* sitting on an IMAP server, because you have been able to download recent mail which would not have remained on a POP server.

[Kim]

My interpretation was IMAP (or at least POP configured to leave messages on server) combined with local folders, but good call with download all messages.

Local folders are a work of Stan, but if you have to have them the mail client should have the decency to use something portable like mbox^[1] files.  Obviously Microsoft are prime offenders for doing their own thing for no obvious reason.


_{[1] mbox is literally a load of emails, in plain text as they're sent on the wire, concatenated together.  Mail clients (and indeed IMAP servers) usually present them as a folder.  It's not particularly fast, but there's no shortage of software to read them, and it's easy enough to write your own if you have to.}

[andrewc]

It's a BTinternet email account so an IMAP server.    When I log into my account using the web interface at email.bt.com I've got emails going back over 10 years on there.   When I log in using her details there is nothing older than 26/02/23.  I don't know why that's the case.  She's never used the web interface. 


It looks like pulling the stuff off the hard drive is going to be the only option.

[Jaded]

If it was Outlook on the PC, and so in as .pst file, I think you can import them to Outlook for the Mac.

[Feanor]

It's a BTinternet email account so an IMAP server.    When I log into my account using the web interface at email.bt.com I've got emails going back over 10 years on there.   When I log in using her details there is nothing older than 26/02/23.  I don't know why that's the case.  She's never used the web interface. 

Does that date correlate with anything, eg the last time the old Win7 box touched the IMAP server before expiring?
If so, perhaps the email client on the Win7 box was somehow configured to remove mail from the server after downloading it.

It looks like pulling the stuff off the hard drive is going to be the only option.

Do you know what mail client they were using?

[Kim]

Does that date correlate with anything, eg the last time the old Win7 box touched the IMAP server before expiring?
If so, perhaps the email client on the Win7 box was somehow configured to remove mail from the server after downloading it.

My thoughts exactly.  It may be that the server also supports POP3 access to the same mailbox, which would normally be configured to remove messages from the server after fetching.  With IMAP, it's usual to leave messages on the server, but it was common practice during the pre-gmail era for ISPs to provide insufficient quota to make this practical, and for their configuration destructions (or automatic setup scripts) to configure IMAP clients to remove mail from the server, either immediately in the POP3 style, or after reaching a certain age.

[andrewc]

The PC died on the 4th March, but she’ll have been getting mail on her phone & iPad as well.
She now says that she’s not too bothered.   There is an old Dell under the desk which is even older . If I can be bothered I’ll shove the drive into that & see if I can get anything off that way.   They are hoarders, I’m going to have to get rid of loads of old kit for them.