[X-Newbies] To Move Mail & Bookmarks From Admin to User Acc't

[Al Poulin]

Thanks again for the excellent advice I received to questions in 
getting ready to install Panther on my QuickSilver G4.

Being the OS X newbie that I am, I went through the canned setup 
process which set the Administrator account.  I immediately imported 
all my e-mail and the Address Book from the OS 9.2.2 Outlook Express.  
Then I imported the Favorites from Internet Explorer 5.1 to IE 5.2.  
Opening Safari for the first time brought the Bookmarks from IE 5.2 to 
Safari.  And I have continued updating both Mail and the Safari 
Bookmarks since then.  All this works fine in the Admin account, but 
what a blunder!

Now I want to copy or move the e-mail and the Bookmarks to a new user 
account.  Is this feasible and safe?  From rummaging around, it appears 
to be a simple procedure to drag and drop what I want from the Admin 
account to the new user account.

For e-mail, I could move or copy either the entire Mail folder or its 
individual contents.  The first alternative would be:

Log in as Admin, use Finder's Icon View:
	Go to /Admin User's Home/Library/Mail , duplicate the contents of the 
Mail folder.
	Go to /Admin User's Home/ , open the Public folder to reveal the Drop 
Box.
	Drag all duplicate items to the Drop Box.	

Log into new user account, again using Finder's Icon View:
	Go to /New User's Home/Public/ , open Drop Box to reveal the duplicate 
items.
	Go to /New User's Home/Library/Mail .  Move all contents of Mail 
folder to Trash.
	Drag duplicate items from Drop Box to Mail folder.
	Eliminate "copy" from name of each item in Mail folder.

Will this work?  Are there issues with permissions or ownership?  If 
so, are there steps to take to resolve the issues?

What about invisible files?

As a second alternative, will it work as well to simply duplicate and 
drag the Admin's Mail folder itself?

And finally, would the technique work in duplicating and dragging the 
contents of the Admin's Safari folder?

At /Admin User's Home/Library/ , there is a Caches folder with folders 
for Mail and Safari which are loaded with stuff three levels down.  Do 
I duplicate and drag these items too?  What about the Cookies folder?  
I see the Preferences folder with com.apple.mail.plist and 
com.apple.Safari.plist.  Should I dupe/drag these too or just make up 
new preferences after I start using the new user's account for Mail and 
Safari?  Are there any other preferences involved that are  not 
obvious?


Al Poulin
Anger, hate, and revenge are for the devil, forgiveness is for God, 
proactive self-defense is for the rest of us.



invisibles