This Mac tip is provided by Mark Greentree and was originally posted on Mark’s blog – Everyday Mac Support. For more of Mark’s tips visit his site, follow him on Twitter, or browse his archive of posts here.
How to: Find My Emails Stored On My Hard Drive
If you wanted to backup only your emails stored on your Mac how would you go about locating the master files?
It is slightly hidden but by following these steps you will be able to easily locate your stored mail and associated folders directly on your hard drive.
From the Finder, navigate to the ‘GO’ menu in the Menu Bar at the top of your display. Then when the menu drops down press the ‘Option’ key on your keyboard. This will then present the hidden ‘Library’ option. Highlight and select ‘Library’.
The Library window for all your applications will open. Look for a folder titled ‘Mail’. ‘Mail Downloads’ is also located in this folder. That folder contains all attachments to your emails. If you remove, delete, or rename any of these they will no longer link to your email.
Going back now to the ‘Mail’ folder, double click to open and you will see a folder called ‘V2’. Open this folder also. You will now be presented with folders for your email accounts, any mailboxes you may have setup in mail, and RSS feeds if you use Mail for RSS (Really Simple Syndication).
Within these folders is the data of your stored email and mailboxes.
Navigate through the folders and you will notice when you open a .mbox folder that you can drill down and perform a quick view directly in the finder of stored emails by pressing the spacebar.
Please note some files may not be readable in applications other than the Mail app.
This tip is for Mac OS X Lion 10.7 users. In Snow Leopard or previous versions of the operating system the Library folder was not hidden hence the additional hold down Option key step is not necessary.
