I have a friend who has been using Outlook for on her Mac for many years (and complaining about it constantly) and now wants to move to Apple Mail. Yay!
However, she has never deleted any messages on her mail server (there are approximately 47,000 messages there dating back 10 years. )
I’m concerned that once I set up her Apple Mail, her machine will be overwhelmed (as will she) by the volume of messages.
Is there a way to limit how far back Apple Mail will go in retrieving messages? Or is this just not a big deal and I shouldn’t worry about it?
I have never found a way to limit what it downloads. Having said that, I have a comparable number of messages in my various inboxes, and once the initial population (read: download) is done, it’s not an issue.
It’s been a while since I changed computers in a way that required such a mass transfer, possibly never actually!
I’ve used Apple Mail App for decades and at some point realized I didn’t need it on all my devices so began moving it from server to On My Mac and it has kept my server use quite minimal.
Directly to your questions I don’t know a way, sorry, but I suspect it’s not such a big deal. I suspect quite a few ideas will come to you in this Topic.
Caveats aside, I suspect such a move could take some time online, depending on connection speed and size of 47k messages (ie if there are a lot of large attachments) and with proper planning and backups and patience might work fine. I thought about how I’d try this and have some ideas that may or may not be sensible but might be helpful.
For instance, I take it this is an IMAP account, so what’s on server should also be in Outlook on the Mac. If so, there might be a direct import from Outlook to Mail on the Mac, so no internet required. This might preserve any organization of mail in Outlook.
Then it would be a matter of disabling Outlook’s accounts so they don’t update any more, then enabling the accounts in Mail.
Consider checking out takecontrolbooks.com’s works on Apple Mail, there might be a solution in there!
I take it the friend wants to use the same email accounts in Mail… just change apps midstream so to speak. If not, and they are taking up new email accounts to use in Mail, then simply disable Outlook’s account updating and use it as an archive, and proceed from scratch with Mail.
I recently moved my daily activities to a MBAir and did similar, disabling the older Mac’s accounts in Mail and enabling them on MBAir (after some weeks of overlap to get commonly used addresses etc) and I just check the older one when I need something from it.
Consider after the move, going with your friend through all of Mail’s settings and menus so they are comfy with its varied options and can figure out how to get the things they are used to getting done on Outlook, done in Mail.
I have not used Outlook for many years, so double-check that this is possible. Use EagleFiler to archive some or all mail that is in Outlook. Then, delete all archived mail in Outlook. Check that deleted mail is deleted permanently, not only moved into a trash folder. EagleFiler has a free trial. EagleFiler Manual
There is no simple import into Apple Mail. It is a two step process: Export from Outlook to mbox format (you need an app for that) and then import into Apple Mail.
In my view, not worth the hassle for just 47,000 messages. Just connect Apple Mail to the Outlook server and let it load everything whilst you have several cups of coffee.
Actually, I’m not so sure you do need an app for that anymore. This page seems to indicate that you can drag an entire folder from Outlook to your desktop and it will create an mbox file.
If you don’t want to convert your entire inbox, you can create another folder, perhaps called “export”, add any messages you want, and then drag that to the desktop.
I’m still running Mojave 10.14.6, but I have verified that it works in the latest version of Outlook that I can run (16.54).
Note that you must drag a folder for this to work, not the messages in the folder.
The one tried and tested way of having an email client not download everything off the server is to use an iPad or iPhone. For… reasons… these platforms “save you from yourself” so you don’t go filling up your (possibly) 1TB iPad with thousands of emails. Meanwhile, on your 256GB MacBook Air… down they all come!
It is an anachronistic hangover that no mail software vendor seems to want to address. It boggles my mind why not. I recall using The Bat! on Windows many years ago and I’m pretty sure it had a simple config, per account, of what you wanted it to do. It’s not exactly rocket surgery.
As noted by @gilby101 and described thus in Mail User Guide (Help > Mail Help or ⌘?):
" Import or export mailboxes in Mail on Mac
Mail can import email messages that have been exported in mbox format from other email apps, and import mailboxes exported from Mail on a Mac. You can export mailboxes in mbox format…"
followed by steps to do so an so on.
I have no idea how to export mail from Outlook (haven’t used it in decades) but hopefully its help files describe how to do it while maintaining any filing structure etc.
I lean toward the “not a big deal” and don’t worry about it option. Unless your friend has a very slow or unreliable network, synchronizing 47k messages shouldn’t be a problem. Assuming the accounts are set up correctly, you shouldn’t see any serious difference in counts of read vs unread, trash, junk, or other messages. What kind of account(s) does she have, i.e., IMAP, POP, Gmail, Exchange?
That said, archiving older emails is a reasonable option. As others have suggested, you can create an mbox-formatted archive of a Mac Outlook folder simply by dragging the folder from Outlook to a folder on your Mac.
You also can create an “OLM” archive of everything in Outlook using Outlook’s “Export” command. Most other programs don’t directly support OLM files, so you would need a tool like Emailchemy to convert the OLM file to something more useful.
It also may be worth investigating a dedicated mail archiving program, like Mail Archiver X, which can connect directly to a server and give you a lot of control over the process. You can download a PDF of the manual.
In my experience, every email program has its own quirks. I use Mail, Outlook, and Thunderbird for different, somewhat arbitrary purposes. There are bits of folklore on the net that suggest the Mac Mail.app may start to slow down at 100k-200k messages, but I don’t know if that still applies.
