Backup and Restore Apple Messages on macOS Is there some means of saving your Messages history on OS X and copying it to a new system without doing a full restore from a Time Machine back up?

Doing some searching, I found the below and tried this approach in a virtual machine copy of Mavericks without much luck.  


  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5948332


Despite copying the files to their respective locations on the fresh install and adjusting permissions, the new installation version of Messages never seems to import/recognize the history from my current system.

To ensure my permissions were okay, I also found


  Mavericks Mail will not save preferences


which was linked to by


  Fixing broken Messages on OS X Mavericks


but this also did not result in Messages importing/using the copied history.  Both instances of Mavericks are using Messages 8.0
Yes, it is possible to import message history from a Time Machine backup onto a new machine without a full restore from a Time Machine backup. This was tested on 10.10 but should work for at least 10.9 as well.


Take a full Time Machine backup of the new system.
Quit Messages.app.
Remove all of the following files and directories on the new system:

~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iChat/
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/
~/Library/Messages/
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imessage.bag.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.FaceTime.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.iMessage.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.ids.FaceTime.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.ids.iMessage.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.Jabber.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.StatusMessages.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.Yahoo.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.plist

Copy the following files and directories from your Time Machine backup to their respective locations on your new system:

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.iChat/
~/Library/Messages/
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imessage.bag.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.FaceTime.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.iMessage.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.ids.FaceTime.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.imservice.ids.iMessage.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.AIM.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.Jabber.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.LSSharedFileList.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.StatusMessages.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.Yahoo.plist
~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iChat.plist

Restart your system