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Importing email from pop account after deleating it

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I had a pop account. Then I added an imap account and deleted the pop account for that same email address. I just forgot to move the emails from my archives folder before deleting that account. But I can see on my disk that the files with the emails are still present and I can open them with my text editor. I just can't find a way to import them into the new imap account. I tried the ImportExportTools, and when try to import one of those files, the subfolder is created under my imap mailaccount in Thunderbird, but the emails themselves are missing. The files are all mbox files.

I'm uysing the latest Thunderbird version on Linux Mint 19.

I had a pop account. Then I added an imap account and deleted the pop account for that same email address. I just forgot to move the emails from my archives folder before deleting that account. But I can see on my disk that the files with the emails are still present and I can open them with my text editor. I just can't find a way to import them into the new imap account. I tried the ImportExportTools, and when try to import one of those files, the subfolder is created under my imap mailaccount in Thunderbird, but the emails themselves are missing. The files are all mbox files. I'm uysing the latest Thunderbird version on Linux Mint 19.

Chosen solution

I know you have sorted this but I've an idea to test out just in case it is the reason why those mbox files did not display emails. Someone else posted a similar issue and noticed a difference in the structure of the mbox file. Perhaps this explains what occured. They were comparing an old mbox file from a while ago.

eg: 'New' - each email in mbox file started with the following...

  • From - Fri Jun 19 16:49:56 2015
  • X-Account-Key: account1
  • X-UIDL: AKdUfbwAAFXTVYQQNgVLeCXC0EY
  • X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
  • X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000

The 'old' one started each email with this structure

  • From - Fri Jun 19 16:49:56 2015
  • X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
  • X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
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All Replies (2)

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Exactly – because I wanted to know which messages are in this mbox file and nothing was displayed in Thunderbird (no surprise now for me because ALL messages had the deleted status).

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Hi Patrick. That solved it for me too! Thanks! I already decided to just keep them locked up in a zip file in a backup folder, but now I was able to import them after all. :)

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