Restore .mbox files from NAS to T'Bird Local Folders

[Budgie3]

I have saved archived folders by year to off line storage and they are saved in the cloud.

I need to copy some of these folders to the Thunderbird Local Storage folder so they may easily be accessed off line. What should I copy to Local Folders and how is the index then rebuilt?

If at some time I need to restore the archived folders to the IMAP server how should I do this please?

Regards,
Budge

[DanRaisch]

If those archived folders are stored as mbox files, you should be able to close Thunderbird and copy the files from the cloud and paste them into the directory ...\Mail\Local Folders. Launch Thunderbird, access Local Folders and you should find new folders with the names of the files just copied in. The "index files" will be created when you access each of those folders to view the messages they contain.

To place messages back on the IMAP server, it may be easiest and safest to create appropriate folders in the IMAP account structure in Thunderbird and then copy the messages fro the Local Folders sub-folders into the corresponding folders in the IMAP account. Doing so will place the messages back onto the server.

For safety sake, COPY, do not MOVE, messages between the Local Folders structure and the IMAP folders in Thunderbird, particularly if you are acting on more then a few messages. This way, if there is any problem with the data transfer, rather than losing messages you will have the messages still under Local Folders to repeat the process

[tanstaafl]

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mail_Utilities#MboxViewer has links to several free utilities that can display mail stored in mbox files. If you rarely need to use the archived mail folders that might be more convenient than either copying the files to the "Local Folders" local directory (as Dan described) or using the ImportExportTools NG add-on to import them. The utilities are pretty good, they have full MIME support, support mbox files larger than 4GB, and can open attachments.

[Budgie3]

Hi Tanstaafl,
Many thanks for the info. Will look into this further as one client uses windoze but my work is all Linux. Am waiting for system to settle in use to find out which, if any, archives might be brought back to life but thanks for the suggestions.
Regards,
Budge