What file extensions does Mozilla Thunderbird use?

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Wubbba
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What file extensions does Mozilla Thunderbird use?

Post by Wubbba »

I am trying to backup my files to an external hard drive. Of course everything is set to work with MS Office Outlook. I need to make sure that my email messages that are moved to my C: drive is backed up, but my external drive needs to know the file extensions. I know - stupid question, but I really need the answer. ](*,)
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steviex
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Post by steviex »

Try this extension... You can use it to back up emails in a variety of formats, http://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -Albert Einstein

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couldabeen
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Post by couldabeen »

To answer your question, Thunderbird does not use a file extension like Outlook and Outlook Express.
It uses a text file that is of the mbox format type. Here's a search page you can peruse to help understand mbox.
http://www.google.com/search?q=mbox&ie= ... =firefox-a

Find your profile, and open the MAIL folder. In it you will see things like Inbox and Inbox.msf, sent and sent.msf on so on. The files without the .msf extension are the actual email files. The ones with the .msf extension are 'summary' files for how they messages are displayed.

So technically, all you have to do is backup your MAIL folder from your profile. I will tell you however, that is is advisable to use a tool like steviex pointed you to, so you can re-import without a lot of hoop jumping, and loss of existing mails.
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