Importing emails from Evolution to Thunderbird?

stodge · Post by **stodge** » October 26th, 2005, 4:57 pm

I've read the posts that explain how to import from Evolution to Thunderbird, but they don't seem to apply anymore as they about sub-directories/files that I don't have. Is anyone aware of a more recent explanation?

Thanks

GordMcFee · Post by **GordMcFee** » October 26th, 2005, 8:29 pm

What kind of email program is Evolution? Can its mail files be exported to some other format, or into some other email program?

stodge · Post by **stodge** » October 27th, 2005, 3:05 pm

It's part of the GNOME desktop and it doesn't have an export feature as far as I can tell.

Thanks

animalthemuppet · Post by **animalthemuppet** » October 27th, 2005, 3:08 pm

Why not try this:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Export_mail_i ... k_(Express)_or_Apple_Mail

Depending on the format Evolution uses to store the emails, one of the programs at the bottom of the page (of the above link) might be able to export the individual emails from the Evolution inbox file and then you could import them back into Thunderbird.

Post by **Daifne** » October 27th, 2005, 3:12 pm

If evolutions uses the mbox format which is Unix/linux native, you should be able to just copy them into Thunderbird.

stodge · Post by **stodge** » October 27th, 2005, 5:18 pm

Which files do I copy? I tried copying some but it didn't do anything. For example I have these files in Evolution for Inbox:

-rw-rw-r-- 1 mike mike 194 Oct 27 18:29 /home/mike/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox.cmeta
-rw------- 1 mike mike 8888 Oct 26 20:21 /home/mike/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox.ev-summary
-rw------- 1 mike mike 97280 Oct 26 19:11 /home/mike/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox.ibex.index
-rw------- 1 mike mike 81332 Oct 26 19:11 /home/mike/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox.ibex.index.data

Post by **Daifne** » October 27th, 2005, 5:22 pm

I would suspect Inbox.cmeta, but I don't know if that's an mbox file or not.

Post by **tanstaafl** » October 27th, 2005, 5:56 pm

I was under the impression those are just metafiles. Supposedly cmeta stores any per-folder state or persistent properties, ev-summary is the summary file representing an index of all messages in the folder, and .ibex.index and .ibex.index.data are the Camel.Index index and data files for content indexing.

Use a text editor and open several of the files. You should have no problem recognizing whether its a mbox file because its basicly just a text file that stores the messages (including all of thier headers)for the folder seperated by from_ lines.

http://www.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/09/10/1446217 states:
"Specifically, for an Evolution folder called, say, Santa, create a folder in Thunderbird also called Santa and then from the command line type something like cp ~/evolution/local/Santa/mbox ~/.thunderbird/default.xyz/Mail/Local Folders/Santa. Note that in the Evolution hierarchy, each mbox file is actually named mbox and lives in a directory named for the email folder. In Thunderbird, all the folders reside in the same directory and each mbox file bears the name of the folder it represents."

Do you know for a fact you're using mbox rather than mh or maildir?

stodge · Post by **stodge** » October 27th, 2005, 5:59 pm

I don't know what I'm using to be honest. I don't know how to tell.

Post by **tanstaafl** » October 27th, 2005, 6:04 pm

See if http://email.about.com/cs/evolutiontips/qt/et110103.htm helps. You might export the contents of your inbox folder as a mbox file that way and then compare that file with what you have at /home/mike/.evolution/mail/local/Inbox

stodge · Post by **stodge** » October 27th, 2005, 6:16 pm

Ah that works! Thanks!

saillord · Post by **saillord** » January 5th, 2006, 2:36 pm

Whereas with me exporting the mails from evolution to an mbox-file worked well following the posting above, thunderbird is still not able to recognize the saved folder to import it. I have been struggling around quite a while now trying to get all my thousands of mails in x subfolders well to thunderbird (as well as the adressbook which isn't maching import/export neither) - but until now unfortunately without success. Wouldn't it be worth to post a feature-request/bug/whatever to demand a better import/export-filter able to read the mbox-format as well as vcards-adressbooks - I can imagine that quite a lot of folks would be interested in that - and if yes: where is the rigth place: bugzilla ? (or does tb1.5 already have this feature? I am still using tb1.07 on a gentoo system under gnome with actually evolution 2.4.2 as mailclient. As the gnupg-support provided by the enigmail-plugin for tb is by far better I would like to switch over now finally).

Thanks for any hints - Rapha

Post by **Daifne** » January 5th, 2006, 7:52 pm

Have you tried using MboxImport? http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic=2074