import-emlx not importing from Apple Mail Library (~/Library/Mail)

[robertovalerio]

Such a great tool. Unfortunately it does not seem to look recursively through the Apple Mail directories as advertised with "import-emlx":

msgvault import-emlx xyz.com ~/Library/Mail
Import complete.
Mailboxes: 0 discovered, 0 imported
Processed: 0 messages
Added: 0 messages
Updated: 0 messages
Skipped (dup): 0 messages
Errors: 0

same for

msgvault import-emlx xyz.com ~/Library/Mail/V10

or any other path.

Full file access is granted. Other (mbox) imports run flawlessly.

[wesm]

I'll have to investigate. I imported some very old Apple Mail so probably something has changed in the meantime

[robertovalerio]

Thanks a lot. Unfortunately, it is still not working on my setup. It only added one folder out of dozens, and only from one mail account (using 4). I will try on another Mac client. Could someone else with a current Apple Mail setup check as well?

msgvault import-emlx x@x.com ~/Library/Mail/V10
time=2026-02-27T22:31:51.553+01:00 level=INFO msg="importing mailbox" label="Sent Messages" files=5 index=0
Import complete.
Mailboxes: 1 discovered, 1 imported
Processed: 5 messages
Added: 5 messages
Updated: 0 messages
Skipped (dup): 0 messages
Errors: 0

[wesm]

@robertovalerio is it possible that you do not have full disk access enabled? On my machine I actually cannot access my Apple Mail directories from the terminal — I had to copy the directory somewhere else from the finder to be able to access them with msgvault. Do you see any other errors (and you're definitely using the latest version?)? You could try to ask Claude or Codex to debug it for you, that would actually be the most helpful thing for me

[robertovalerio]

• Using 0.9.0 so far.
• Added /usr/local/bin/msgvault to "Full Disk Access"
• Ran it as (admin) user and via sudo as well.

I am still new to Claude @ debugging, but I will see what I can do

[wesm]

Not much to learn, just install Claude Code and give it a link to this issue and ask it to investigate

[robertovalerio]

"Now I can see the problem. Your Apple Mail uses a non-standard nested directory structure with UUID subdirectories and a Data/X/Y/Z/Messages/ hierarchy. msgvault's import-emlx expects the simpler structure where Messages/ is directly inside .mbox directories — not buried under Data/9/9/8/Messages/. This is likely a newer macOS Apple Mail format (V10) that msgvault doesn't fully support yet."

"msgvault's import-emlx doesn't handle the Data/X/Y/Z/Messages/ subdirectory structure that newer macOS versions use. It's scanning for .mbox/Messages/.emlx but your files are at .mbox/UUID/Data/X/Y/Z/Messages/.emlx."

[wesm]

This is supposed to be exactly the problem addressed by 4801588, have you tried using the latest version of the software?

[robertovalerio]

Yep. 0.9.0
Once time installed via your bash installation script and one time compiled from source. Tried both binaries

/Users/admin/.local/bin/msgvault import-emlx applemail /Users/admin/Library/Mail/V10
/usr/local/bin/msgvault/msgvault import-emlx applemail /Users/admin/Library/Mail/V10

msgvault v0.9.0
commit: 4801588
built: 2026-02-26T20:45:49Z
go: go1.25.7
os/arch: darwin/arm64

[wesm]

I asked Claude about this for some more things to check:

---

• Full Disk Access is still the main culprit. He added /usr/local/bin/msgvault to FDA, but if he's invoking it
  through a shell (Terminal.app, iTerm2), the terminal also needs FDA. Running via sudo doesn't bypass TCC
  restrictions either.
• His directory structure has another nesting variant not covered by the fix (e.g., multiple UUID levels, or
  mailboxes organized differently across his 4 accounts).

I'd suggest replying that the AI diagnosis was stale/wrong (the fix is already in v0.9.0), and asking him to:

1. Verify his terminal app has Full Disk Access (not just the binary)
2. Run find ~/Library/Mail/V10 -name "*.emlx" | head -20 to confirm he can actually see .emlx files from the
   terminal
3. Share the directory tree structure (e.g., find ~/Library/Mail/V10 -type d -maxdepth 5) so you can verify the
   V10 walking logic covers his layout