How to Determine the Location of Apple Mail Emails on Your Mac

This article describes how to locate and access all of your Mail email files across all Apple OS X Mail versions.

How to Obtain Access to Stored OS X Mail

The location of your Mail messages is not immediately obvious. They’re hidden in a folder in the Library, and the archive is named.mbox. Given that you may occasionally need to copy your email to another computer or even backup stored messages, here’s how to locate and access all of your Mail email files.

These instructions apply to versions 2 and higher of OS X Mail.

1. Launch a new Finder window or click on your Mac’s desktop.
2. While holding down the Option key, navigate to the top menu bar and select Go.
3. From the drop-down menu, select Library.
4. Locate the Mail folder by scrolling down.
5. You’ll notice that some folders contain a string of characters and a V with a number indicating the Mail version, for example, V6. Your folders and messages are contained within subfolders of the V folder.
6. Open and explore these folders in order to locate, open, and copy emails.

To locate the folder in which Mac OS X Mail version 1 stores mail, follow these steps:

1. Begin by opening a new Finder window.
2. Select the Home toolbar button or Go > Home from the menu bar to navigate to your home directory.
3. Locate your emails in the Library/Mail directory.