General Email Question

James_N · 17 Jul 2006 at 11:36

Hi

I want to switch over to linux but i have all my emails on windows stored in Thunderbird. How could i get these emails from Thunderbird in windows, to Thunderbird in Linix? (either suse or ubuntu, not sure yet!)

I have a gmail account, and short of sending each email to gmail, im not sure how i can do it, and there is a fair few emails.

Oh and by the way, SuSe or Ubuntu?

punky_munky · 17 Jul 2006 at 12:12

Does thunderbird have import/export option? I've never used it myself but it's a common email client feature.

James_N · 17 Jul 2006 at 12:17

it has an import option but from what i can see, you can only import messages from other email clients on the same pc.

There is also mozbackup that you can use to backup profiles but that doesnt run on linux. I can save the profiles and what not onto cd from within documents and settings folder, but then, the filesystem is different on linux.

M0KUJ1N · 17 Jul 2006 at 14:27

you should just be able to dump the mailboxes in your Windows Thunderbird profile into your Linux profile. In fact you may as well just drop the entire contents of one profile over the other (taking a backup copy first of course

).

Burbleflop · 17 Jul 2006 at 15:05

M0KUJ1N said:
you should just be able to dump the mailboxes in your Windows Thunderbird profile into your Linux profile. In fact you may as well just drop the entire contents of one profile over the other (taking a backup copy first of course ).

Exactly what I do. Thunderbird uses the same mail format irrespective of platform so no need to arse about with importing or exporting.

James_N · 17 Jul 2006 at 16:19

Burbleflop said:
Exactly what I do. Thunderbird uses the same mail format irrespective of platform so no need to arse about with importing or exporting.

ok thats great! thanks a lot

James_N · 18 Jul 2006 at 13:28

Burbleflop said:
Exactly what I do. Thunderbird uses the same mail format irrespective of platform so no need to arse about with importing or exporting.

Well i installed ubuntu and tried this, and it didnt work for some reason. Just copied the profiles from my external drive into /home/.mozilla~thunderbird directory and nothing

Any other ideas?

AndrewP · 18 Jul 2006 at 14:30

Tried putting them in /home/.thunderbird aswell/instead of?

My Fedora box has everything in .thunderbird, my colleagues ubuntu one has .mozilla-thunderbird which is just a link to .thunderbird.

James_N · 18 Jul 2006 at 14:33

AndrewP said:
Tried putting them in /home/.thunderbird aswell/instead of?

My Fedora box has everything in .thunderbird, my colleagues ubuntu one has .mozilla-thunderbird which is just a link to .thunderbird.

didnt notice a .thunderbird dir in there, i'll have a look when i get home

Cheers.

mortals · 18 Jul 2006 at 14:59

I just copied my old thunderbird stuff into my new linux install and it works ok.

Code:

cp -fr /old/location/.mozilla-thunderbird ~/.mozilla-thunderbird

works ok for me

also the directory for windows - C: / Documents and Settings/user/Application Data/Thunderbird/Profiles/

James_N · 19 Jul 2006 at 11:03

got it sorted, thanks all for your help