reading old, saved thunderbird mail

Robin Laing Robin.Laing at drdc-rddc.gc.ca
Mon Feb 12 21:30:55 UTC 2007


Matt Morgan wrote:
> My server crashed recently. I've restored the files but not the server.
> 
> I had an IMAP server on this machine, and I connected it to it from a
> few different computers, always with Thunderbird. After the server
> crashed, I moved to a mail host instead of running it myself. I can
> connect to that host fine, but on this desktop (FC5 and Thunderbird
> via yum, i.e., 1.5.0.9), when I changed my account settings to point
> it to the new host, I lost all my existing mail in Thunderbird.
> 
> I had backed up before hand, and I have a couple other computers with
> Thunderbird that still have all the local files representing the local
> copies of the IMAP inbox & other folders.
> 
> There has to be a way to tell Thunderbird just to read the local
> files, from the backup copy, or otherwise read my saved mail from
> those saved copies, right? I can't figure it out.
> 
> Thanks,
> Matt
> 

It shouldn't be that hard if the mail was saved in a normal thunderbird 
mail box format.  If it was saved in any other format you may have to 
import it.

Simple test.

If you have a normal set of files such as Inbox, Inbox.msf, and possibly 
an Inbox.sbd, then you should be able to open those in a local directory.

Put the files in  .thunderbird/{default}/Mail/Local/* and go from there. 
  I do this every day with exporting from Evolution (needed to get mail 
from exchange server) to use in Thunderbird.

You can then write filters to move the mail into your normal boxes if 
you wish.

-- 
Robin Laing




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