How to Archive a Mailbox in Apple Mail

Use Apple Mail to archive a mailbox on your Mac.

Every Mac sold by Apple comes with a variety of free applications and utilities pre-installed so you can start working with your computer right away. After you use the email application Apple Mail for a while, you may start to accumulate a lot of messages. When you have important messages, it is useful to archive, or make a backup copy of them so you can retrieve them later even if the originals are deleted. You can easily archive a mailbox in Apple Mail.

Instructions

1. Click on the "Mail" icon in the Dock to launch the email application.

2. Click on a mailbox that you want to archive.

3. Click "Mailbox" from the Mail menu, and then click "Archive Mailbox." You can also click on a mailbox to select it, then click on the gear icon at the bottom of the Mail window, and then click "Archive Mailbox" from the pull-down menu. A dialog box will appear.

4. Click on a destination folder to store the archive, or click "New Folder" to create a new folder to store your mailbox's archive, and then click "Choose." Mail creates an archive of the mailbox as an ".mbox" package.

5. Click "File," then click "Import Mailboxes," then click on a Mail archive ".mbox" package on your hard drive, and then click "Choose" to import archived mail.

References

• Apple: Mail 4.0 Help: Archiving Mailboxes