At some point, we have all wanted to move our email accounts and mails over to another computer. Unfortunately, Mail doesn’t make it very easy to do but, it is possible. You can watch the screencast here or continue reading after the jump.

Step 1:
Log into the user who you would like to take the mail account information from. Navigate from the users home directory to their Library folder. Scroll down until you see a folder entitled ‘Mail‘. Take the folder called ‘Mail‘ and transfer it somewhere that you can access from within the other user, or other computer.

Step 2:
Again, navigate to the users home directory, open the Library folder and locate a folder entitled “Preferences”. Find the two preferences entitled ‘com.apple.mail.plist‘ and ‘com.apple.mail.searchhistory.plist‘ and copy them to the same location as your ‘Mail‘ folder.

Step 3:
Log into the user who you are transferring the Mail data to. Download and open batCHmod (or use the Terminal) and change the permissions of the three files (Mail, com.apple.Mail.plist, com.apple.Mail.searchhistory.plist) to reflect the new owner.

Step 4:
Replace ‘Mail‘ to ‘User Home Directory>Library>‘ and the two ‘.plist files to ‘User Home Directory>Library>Preferences‘ folder.

Step 5:
Launch Mail! That is it, you are done. If you are having any problems, consult the video to watch me do it. Otherwise, feel free to contact me!

–Matt Dodd