Backup / Restore IMAP accounts to new host
Hello,
I need to transfer all e-mail accounts of a domain to a new E-mail host. My idea is to configure a thunderbird client in a server with all domain e-mail accounts in order to back up then. When I switch the domain to the new E-mail host, the idea is to use this backup to populate the new accounts on this host.
In order to test my idea, I did the follow steps:
1) Create a new e-mail account 2) Configured Thunderbird with this account (IMAP) and populate it with some messages and folders. 3) Did the Backup of thunderbird account profile. 4) Closed the Thunderbird 5) I’ve deleted the account a created it again with the same credentials, in order to simulate the account on a new host. 6) Then I Opened Thunderbird and, after synchronize the account, restore the profile.
The problem: As the message sync is done from the host to the client (Thunderbird), All messages restored are deleted. This because the new account have no messages in the host.
Question: Is there a way to use thunderbird to restore all messages of the profile to a new account?
I will need to do this for the almost 90 e-mails accounts of the domain. Anyone know a (free) tool that can do this?
Best Regards,
Marcelo
Solución elegida
Hi,
For those who needs to make a local IMAP account backup and then restore it (E.g. to another host), should take a look at rick-sanders-imap-tools (https://github.com/andrewnimmo/rick-sanders-imap-tools ) It is some Perl scripts that can (among other things) do the job.
I'll close this post as solved.
Best Regards,
Marcelo
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You're wanting to move server files from one server to another. Do you have access to the servers, such as via FTP? There is a freeware tool called imapsize that you could look at, as it can create backups from the server and (apparently) restore to the server, but I have never tried it. Thunderbird could do it, but it's a laborious process and problem-prone, as IMAP was not designed for mass uploads.
Hi David
Thank you for the answer. The IMAPSIZE is a great tool and does IMAP backup as I need. But I'm using Linux and searching for alternatives I've found imapbackup (https://taoofmac.com/space/projects/imapbackup ), a python script that have some limitations but worked fine for me. It downloads whole IMAP accounts in mbox files that could be read by thunderbird. Unfortunately, the IMAP messages flags (as read messages flag) are lost with this method. There is also the imapcopy tool that can copy all messages from a host A to host B.
Best Regards,
Marcelo
Thanks for the feedback. I rarely see this situation, and I'll keep the info. :)
Solución elegida
Hi,
For those who needs to make a local IMAP account backup and then restore it (E.g. to another host), should take a look at rick-sanders-imap-tools (https://github.com/andrewnimmo/rick-sanders-imap-tools ) It is some Perl scripts that can (among other things) do the job.
I'll close this post as solved.
Best Regards,
Marcelo
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