I want to import unread and sent emails from another account
Gmail Help sent me to Thunderbird for migrating lots of read, unread and sent emails from a cox.net account that I am likely to abandon over to a Gmail account. Their suggestion was to set new and old accounts into TB and use it to move folder contents. I have my old cox.net active in TB, but I only see unread emails, no unread nor sent. Can I get Thunderbird to mine my cox.net account for few thousand unread and sent emails.
All Replies (5)
Did you set your cox account up an IMAP?
I changed the server settings in TB per the Cox.net help page you cited. See right portion of attached screen capture. Now, when I request read emails, I get a popup that says an error occurred with the POP3 server, but the actual error msg is missing. See left portion of attached.
I had chosen POP3 on a suggestion by Gmail help and the hint in TB that I could actually move messages to my local client storage. Ultimately my objective is to be able to abandon cox.net once I migrate it all.
What I've learned since my initial request for help: T-bird is in fact, bringing in all of my 3300+ received emails, both read and unread, but all are shown with bold lettering which normally means unread. Secondly, POP an IMAP refer to receive email server protocols, hence all migration is of received emails only. The sending email server protocol, SMTP, is not accessed by any migration process that I have encountered. Hence, capturing them is a manual forwarding process and I have about 1100 important ones in one account. Sigh. The bigest concern is that forwarding adds my "from", thus hiding important information, namely who they went to originally. Adding the original receipient to the Subject line would help, but it's another step!
I am sorry to break it to you but your still have lots to learn. What you have just posted is to say the least about the worst way to do what you want you could select.
IMAP gives synchronized access all your folders on the server. POP only the inbox. There will be no sent mail for example.
Once you have IMAP set up for Cox and Gmail in Thunderbird you can drag mail from folder to folder. No forwarding and no changing of the from and to information. But you have to do it right. It is like baking a cake. guessing causes failure.
Great, learning things is the most fun part. It's the making things work that sucks. OK, IMAP has the methods I'm looking for. However, a Cox email support page says clearly: [quote] When changing your Cox.net email from POP to IMAP, you can potentially lose email messages. If a message does not appear in an email account, it may be due to one of the following reasons:
A configuration issue with IMAP or POP access Settings applied to incoming mail, such as filter or forwarding Deliberate or accidental human action, or a comprised account Before deleting the POP email account, it is recommended that you back up your current messages. [unquote, see http://bit.ly/1cyiMIT for the whole post]
Looks like a Catch 22: I need IMAP to save my messages, but I could loose some before I can save them. That's my issue. Further thoughts?
PS: I've already set up a parallel email account with Gmail and turned on it's POP mining feature. All of my old and new in mail is there, except I now get two copies of junk mail, too.