Migrating email from cPanel to another with a caveat

[abitdodgy]

I've been called upon to rescue a mail related situation. A site was migrated from one cPanel to another when changing hosts.

As it turns out email was not already downloaded. When the migration was completed old emails where missing. Users use a combination of Outlook, Mail, and Webmail, and we are talking about 30 user accounts.

I need to import any old emails from the old host to the new one. I logged into cPanel and look for the mail folder, but I found no large files or folders there, leading me to assume that the email must not be present.

1. Where can I find the email folder?
2. Assuming I can find it, download it, then import it to the new cPanel, will it over write any new emails that have been sent or received in the interim, since moving to the new host?

I have almost no experience with cPanel!

[azurecoast]

I've been called upon to rescue a mail related situation. A site was migrated from one cPanel to another when changing hosts.

As it turns out email was not already downloaded. When the migration was completed old emails where missing. Users use a combination of Outlook, Mail, and Webmail, and we are talking about 30 user accounts.

I need to import any old emails from the old host to the new one. I logged into cPanel and look for the mail folder, but I found no large files or folders there, leading me to assume that the email must not be present.

1. Where can I find the email folder?
2. Assuming I can find it, download it, then import it to the new cPanel, will it over write any new emails that have been sent or received in the interim, since moving to the new host?

I have almost no experience with cPanel!

Humm, you might not see the folders if you are looking in the web files, as these are likely to be IMAP folders. The easy way to verify if the emails are still there is use one of the old accounts, and use an IMAP client like Apple Mail or Thunderbird. If the emails are there, a simple way to do a migration is define both IMAP accounts int he Apple Mail client (for example) and drag the emails form one folder to the other in the tree. That is for 1-2 accounts, otherwise it will be a lot of work.

[abitdodgy]

Thanks for the response. This approach would involved changing the MX records for the mail server, no? Since there is a new host, how will Outlook or Apple Mail, or whatever software I use, know where to go to retrieve the old emails?

Humm, you might not see the folders if you are looking in the web files, as these are likely to be IMAP folders. The easy way to verify if the emails are still there is use one of the old accounts, and use an IMAP client like Apple Mail or Thunderbird. If the emails are there, a simple way to do a migration is define both IMAP accounts int he Apple Mail client (for example) and drag the emails form one folder to the other in the tree. That is for 1-2 accounts, otherwise it will be a lot of work.

[azurecoast]

Thanks for the response. This approach would involved changing the MX records for the mail server, no? Since there is a new host, how will Outlook or Apple Mail, or whatever software I use, know where to go to retrieve the old emails?

If you mean using the client method to move the emails, no MX record needs to be used or changed. The MX record is for definition of the "Mail Exchanger"; normally to be used by a mail "router" for delivery of email for a domain. In your case all you need to know is the server with the IMAP services, which "holds" or stores the emails you are trying to get. So, jsut try the old account info, and login there with your client and see if the emails are still there. I would imagine this has not changed at all (the server info). You can use the hostname or IP of the server in most MUA's like Outlook or Thunderbird or Apple Mail.

[cPanelTristan]

You can see the mail folders at /home/username/mail location where username is the cPanel username. In the mail folder, you'll have a domain.com folder for each domain where domain.com is the domain name, then a user folder where user is the email account user's name (such as emily@mypanda.com would be emily for the user's name). In that folder, you'll see new and cur folders and new has unread emails, while cur has read emails. Since each is stored as a separate file, you might have thousands of files.