Hey, thanks very much Rick. I hadn't given up but was certainly stymied and I really appreciate you following up. Once upon a time I could figure out how to problem solve my way through this stuff. Back in the beginning when you'd stay up all night turning off and on half of your extensions and control panels in hopes of finding the sole conflict freezing your Mac Plus. My son and I also built two hackintoshes that served us for a long time when he was 15 so this isn't completely foreign to me. I appreciate the specifics and I'll go back through the many profiles I created and see if I can isolate the mail messages post 2013. From 2007-2012, it's recovered and almost as I originally set it up. I at least have a direction to work in and I'll let you know how it works out. Thanks again, Jack M.

Remember that messages are stored in one file without an extension where there is a pair of files with the same name and the other file has an .msf extension.

I have given you no details for how to do anything. Please ask when you have questions.

Yeah that's what I'm starting with. I remember. I've gathered all these profiles together, and I'm going to go through all of them to search for exactly that, the .msf file paired with the non-msf file. I had a few on the new mini that I just copied and brought back. I'm looking through the Imap folders and Mail folders (including Local folders) for larger entries on the non-msf files. I will post again as I get through these and highlight them on my drive this afternoon. Thank you again, Jack M.

Even if I throw in the towel for conducting the entire profile restore I'll still be around to answer questions and to give hints.

Hello Rick, That took awhile. I came up with 2 profiles that I think are the best candidates for rescuing emails. I went through and tagged all the paired non-msf files with a dot after their name. They are not huge but there are many. I only copied a sampling of them (3 pages) to give you a sense of what the profile looks like. That file in its entirety is 12.77G. The last page is the profile it was paired with which is the identical name but is only 2.25G but only has the mail from 2012 and earlier. Again, those old files are pretty much intact on the new mini-mac even though the first attempt at installing TB failed. By the way I also bought a copy of Wondershare's Recoverit program this morning thinking that may be of some help in gathering up these files. I haven't used it before. Again thank you very much. I'm only able to get one jpg on this so I'll post another page. Jack M.

Rick the remaining images:

Hello Rick, That took awhile. I came up with 2 profiles that I think are the best candidates for rescuing emails. I went through and tagged all the paired non-msf files with a dot after their name. They are not huge but there are many. I only copied a sampling of them (3 pages) to give you a sense of what the profile looks like. That file in its entirety is 12.77G. The last page is the profile it was paired with which is the identical name but is only 2.25G but only has the mail from 2012 and earlier. Again, those old files are pretty much intact on the new mini-mac even though the first attempt at installing TB failed. By the way I also bought a copy of Wondershare's Recoverit program this morning thinking that may be of some help in gathering up these files. I haven't used it before. Again thank you very much. I'm only able to get one jpg on this so I'll post another page. Jack M.

The overall file size may not be significant. I don't know how much space the mozmsgs or other things take up. You also have a folder for gmail allmail, which duplicates messages in other folders (I believe -- I do not use gmail). But you are right that there seem to be many folders with messages.

I am not familiar with Recoverit. I'm usually wary of such apps. I assume that Recoverit is designed to help recover deleted and damaged files. I don't know how useful it may be for you. Deleted files can often be recovered for some time as long as other files have not written over the space on the drive.

Now, does the target profile on your new computer exist?

Even if I throw in the towel for conducting the entire profile restore I'll still be around to answer questions and to give hints.

Please do. I would rather work together on data recovery.

Jack, have you started using Time Machine for back-ups yet?

You'll want to back up everything before we proceed. Or did you already?

May I give a hint? Those mozmsgs folders are polluting the whole "Restoration profile" folder. I propose to start cleaning up the profile by deleting all this mozmsgs crap. After that it would be easier to navigate in the profile folder and concentrate on the essential mbox (message) files. Not to forget .sbd folders which may contain other message files (representing the sub-folders of the parent folder).

May I give a hint? Those mozmsgs folders are polluting the whole "Restoration profile" folder. I propose to start cleaning up the profile by deleting all this mozmsgs crap. After that it would be easier to navigate in the profile folder and concentrate on the essential mbox (message) files. Not to forget .sbd folders which may contain other message files (representing the sub-folders of the parent folder).

Please, give more than hints!

It's a good point. I was not thinking about the folder structure.

Re-create the folder structure in the new profile or copy it with the mbox files to the new profile?

Hello Rick, Sorry for the delay. I started transferring the files about 90 minutes ago and the copying stalled because of this stupid DS_store duplication and it closed down the profile (I thought I had lost it. Maddening). I have both the 12G qqg8c078 Restoration Profile and the 2.25G Restoration Profile (with the same name transferred to the new mac).