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I have a very large personal mail archive that I want to import into Apples Mail.app. Until now, I've kept this archive in a Cyrus IMAP server. The archive consists of several hundreds of IMAP folders and subfolders. I want to keep the entire structure when moving it to Mail.app. I've tried a similar migration with a smaller archive some time ago and ended up creating all folders and moving all messages manually because I was unable to find a way to automatically migrate the entire folder structure. Is there a better solution to this? Is there a built-in function or a third-party add-on that can handle this?

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To clarify, are you trying to replace your IMAP mail archive with local folders, so you're able to e.g. shut down the IMAP server? – Daniel Beck Nov 13 '11 at 10:28
Yes, and I have done that in the meantime. Only to find out that Mail.app did NOT sync all of the messages. Good thing I have a backup of the IMAP server... – vwegert Nov 13 '11 at 10:40
I also thought Mark's answer was rather adventurous, as I don't think the feature is intended to be used like that. If you're no longer interested in an answer, consider deleting this question, flagging it for moderator attention if you cannot do it yourself. – Daniel Beck Nov 13 '11 at 10:46
I don't need it at the moment, but if anyone knew of a way, it'd be cool to know it... – vwegert Nov 13 '11 at 11:19
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Just add it as another account. Mail will then syncronize itself to the IMAP server thus keeping the same structure. See Apple support document. The Account needs to be set up with the option Keep copies of messages for offline viewing set to All messages - either with or without attachments.

Once the sync has finished then all the mails will be available to Mail.app even if there is no connection to the IMAP server.

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