I'm sorry, but I have another migration question!

So I'm moving from a 10 year old Win10 to a new Win11 PC.

Location of OLD mail directories;
Home mailbox location: D:\USERS\IAN\MAIL\ICAMERON
New mailbox location: D:\USERS\IAN\MAIL

Location of NEW mail directories;
Home mailbox location: C:\PMAIL\MAIL\icameron
New mailbox location: C:\PMAIL\MAIL\icameron

I installed PMail on the new machine, and copied over my old MAIL directory structure.

I tried the migration a few weeks ago and the new install located all the new emails, but not my existing mail folders. I've tried again today and now PMail displays all my mail folders, but not my new mail.

I'm guessing the issue is that on the old system new emails were stored in /MAIL, and the mail folders in /MAIL/ICAMERON, whereas on the new system its expecting everything in /MAIL/icameron.

What is the best way to resolve this? Copy the entire contents of the old new mail location to the new? Is there a menu setting or configuration utility that can change the new mail directory? Any other suggestions? I also need to consider a structure that would make it easy for future migrations as well.

Thanks all for your help.

There is a document in the add-ons category of this site that was written for folks needing to combine different Home and New mailbox directories. It is specifically written to combine C:\PMAIL\MAIL\ into C:\PMAIL\MAIL\Admin but in your case it should apply if you replace "Admin" with "ICAMERON". I suggest reading and familiarizing yourself with it and then asking any specific question you may have.

The document is named: Combine Home and New mailbox locations.pdf
You will find it here: https://community.pmail.com/index.php?u=/topic/12214/whitepaper-combine-c-pmail-mail-into-c-pmail-mail-admin-when-home-and-new-mailbox-locations-are-different

Thank you Brian, this worked!

Would suggest looking at lines in PMAIL.INI
With a regular install have something like this.

Working home mailbox location = C:\PMAIL\MAIL\ADMIN
New mailbox location = C:\PMAIL\MAIL\ADMIN

With my install old setup with single user mode have.
Working home mailbox location = C:\PMAIL\MAIL
New mailbox location = C:\PMAIL\MAIL

Would also need to check you PMAIL.CFG in Programs Directory
Simple type with standard setup
C:\PMAIL\MAIL~NC:\PMAIL\MAIL~N
convert the nulls to .
C:\PMAIL\MAIL~N..................................................C:\PMAIL\MAIL~N..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
So have to user pconfig32 to modify. Not Single user setup doesn't have the ~N since mail is in C:\PMAIL\MAIL instead of a subdirectory.

Did a test long ago, and found that moving everything the C:\PMAIL\MAIL to C:\PMAIL\MAIL\ADMIN except PMAIL.USR and then changing the C:\PMAIL\MAIL\ADMIN\PMAIL.INI to point to new directory.

Would look your PMAIL.INI PMAIL.USR and PMAIL.CFG files from botth setup.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Mike, I checked and altered the ini and cfg files as detailed in Brian's and your instructions and it worked. The only issue I came up against was when I opened the pmail.cfg in Notepad there was a mismatch with the character sets and all I got was Chinese characters. There is however a config exe in the programs directory which showed the correct information.

I don't know how I ended up with different directories, maybe some ill-informed decision I made 30 years ago when I first installed PMail. There are a few little settings that didn't carry over (like spell checking before sending) but on the whole it all seems to be working.

You are very welcome. I am glad I was able to help.

It wasn't you. Somewhere along the way, an upgrade likely installed over top of the existing version but installed as single user. This created \Mail as the New mailbox directory but the records in the internal files knew where the Home mailbox was so everything continued working normally.

PMAIL.CFG is not a TEXT file, so do not use notepad or any text editor to open it.
PCONFIG32.EXE is the program that is used to view or edit it.

Running it will bring up something like this.

Click Continue
Next screen will something like this

This is showing using the multi-user setup with name (~N)
With Single user it would show C:\PMAIL\MAIL\ since it uses that directory without a subdirectory.
Single user.

Generally, run the PMAIL Program with -I Admin or other username setup. With single user no need.
Should have been clearer about using PCONFIG32.
Seems the contents of the PMAIL.CFG is two Null terminated strings some other parts, but name no details on the structure. Since it can include other info.

The structure had the directories twice, don't know why? One mail directory and one new mail directory?? Rest of space have no clue.


Hope that make it clear.

Brian's whitepaper has cautions about corrupting the config file, so I made a copy and opened that. PCONFIG32.EXE is indeed the program I used to check. I appreciate your help, everything seems to be working now.

My entire life's email history is in Pegasus Mail, no doubt I will need to move it to yet again when I next upgrade my hardware, but hopefully it will be more straightforward now that everything is in the one directory.