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Switched hosting provider - issues importing IMAP mail from local copy

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  • Siste svar av Toad-Hall

nick25892
nick25892
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Thanks in advance for answering my question, any help is appreciated.

We recently moved from Crazy Domains to Site Ground for a number of reasons. Prior to doing this I backed up my TBird profiles locally in an effort to keep all of my mail. I was using IMAP.

With the new provider we have a different mail server and I am attempting to use IMAP to access email. I can set up the new email fine and send/receive no worries.

The issue arrises when I want to sync my old emails to TBird from my local copy. TBird had broken up my old in/sent box into 4 different folders, assuming due to the size and the affect this has on UX. If I try to manually import these, it breaks something with TBird. If I try to do an 'import' function from TBird itself, this doesn't work either.

First question: Do I need to import the old mail files into the server or can I just access them locally via TBird? If the former, how does this work?

Second question: If I can simply import these into TBird, how can I do it considering the new structure has 1 folder, 1 of each file and the old has 4 of each file and a different structure and breaks when I try to do it manually?

Basically, I just want to be able to access my old emails that are backed up locally, that are separated into different file structures within TBird profiles, on my new email server.

Thanks in advance for answering my question, any help is appreciated. We recently moved from Crazy Domains to Site Ground for a number of reasons. Prior to doing this I backed up my TBird profiles locally in an effort to keep all of my mail. I was using IMAP. With the new provider we have a different mail server and I am attempting to use IMAP to access email. I can set up the new email fine and send/receive no worries. The issue arrises when I want to sync my old emails to TBird from my local copy. TBird had broken up my old in/sent box into 4 different folders, assuming due to the size and the affect this has on UX. If I try to manually import these, it breaks something with TBird. If I try to do an 'import' function from TBird itself, this doesn't work either. First question: Do I need to import the old mail files into the server or can I just access them locally via TBird? If the former, how does this work? Second question: If I can simply import these into TBird, how can I do it considering the new structure has 1 folder, 1 of each file and the old has 4 of each file and a different structure and breaks when I try to do it manually? Basically, I just want to be able to access my old emails that are backed up locally, that are separated into different file structures within TBird profiles, on my new email server.

All Replies (1)

Toad-Hall
Toad-Hall
  • Top 25 Contributor
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re :Prior to doing this I backed up my TBird profiles locally in an effort to keep all of my mail.

So, I'm presuming you do not have the original imap mail account displaying in Thunderbird, but set up not to connect and I'm also assuming you did not move those emails into 'Local Folders' account at the time, otherwise you would still see them.

If you backed up your thunderbird profile name folder; usually called 'xxxxxxxx.default' where the x's are letters and numbers. The profile name folder would contain a folder called 'ImapMail'. This contains your imap mail accounts. In your imap mail account, Emails are stored in mbox files. Mbox files do not have any extension. You will also see same name file with a .msf extension - these are just indexing files containing headers; they do not contain any emails.

Install this addon extension.

In order to install a downloaded extension, please do the following:

  1. Click the menu button New Fx Menu and choose Add-ons.
  2. Drag your downloaded XPI file to the Add-ons Manager tab and drop it.

or

  1. Click the menu button New Fx Menu and choose Add-ons.
  2. Click the gear icon at the top-right corner to the left of the search box and select Install Add-on From File…
  3. Locate the XPI file you downloaded and click Open.

You may need to restart Thunderbird when prompted. For more detailed instructions and information about installing add-ons, see Installing an Add-on in Thunderbird.

Once installed use that addon extension to import the mbox files back into Local Folders mail account. right click on 'Local Folders' mail account and select: ImportExporttools > Import mbox file If importing just one file select: 'Import directly one or more mbox files

If the original folder had subfolders and you want to import both the file and its subdirectories: select 'Import one or more mbox files, with it's/their subdirectory...' click on OK

then locate the backed up mbox files and click on 'Open' repeat as necessary to import into 'Local Folders' mail account.