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A script to export Mail's mboxes for Thunderbird Apps
Having downloaded Thunderbird, and quite liked the look of it, I decided to migrate my mail from Apple's Mail. Unfortunately, since I have many mailboxes, it's quite a convoluted and time-consuming process -- it involves going into the package contents of each mailbox, copying the mbox file and renaming it, then restructuring the folder hierarchy.

So, I've written an AppleScript to do it all automatically. Point it at your ~/Library/Mail folder, and it will extract all the mbox files and put them in the correct hierarchy in a new folder. Simply drop these new mailboxes into your Thunderbird mail folder, and away you go. I've tested it in OS X 10.3.6 with Mail 1.3.9, and it seems to work fine, but I make no guarantees about other configurations.

[robg adds: I haven't tested this one, but I have looked at the script and it looks fine. I've also mirrored the AppleScript here on hints in case the original goes away.]
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A script to export Mail's mboxes for Thunderbird
Authored by: deviantintegral on Dec 13, '04 10:43:44AM

There was also a hint somewhere about setting up an IMAP server on OS X. Then, just copy all of your messages to the server account, and add the account in whatever mail program you want. This lets you change mail programs with little to no hassle.

--Andrew



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A script to export Mail's mboxes for Thunderbird
Authored by: Pedro Estarque on Dec 13, '04 03:37:03PM

On my attempts to import to Thunderbird the email body worked OK but the attachments were missing. I think Mail.app stores its attachments in a folder like: "subject_of_email.mimeattach" and Thunderbird doesn't understand how to link them.
The funny thing is that the folders are only "created" when you open the attachment. Where they were before is beyond me



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A script to export Mail's mboxes for Thunderbird
Authored by: aamann on Dec 13, '04 07:10:06PM

The atttachments are part of the messages themselves - the additional file created with the name you mentioned will only be created when opening (and might be deleted at any moment thereafter) - it just gives external programs a file to open since they cannot open an (encoded) file in the middle of the message itself.



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A script ... for those attachments...?
Authored by: progosk on Dec 13, '04 04:17:48PM

is there nobody who can help with archiving Mail.app mails INCLUDING the attachments...?

even some complicated way (like the imap server thing), or, i don't know, offloading all the messages to a different user on my pb - anything to relieve my Mail.app from the huge load of stuff (i need to keep all my mails...)

I hate myself for it, but i'm starting to get nostalgic for Outlook Express, for which there was a great archiving app (OEA) to get everything into a wonderful Filemaker database...



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how to save a folder as an MBOX file
Authored by: blech75 on Dec 13, '04 05:26:45PM

to save all the messages in a folder using mail.app, go into the folder, select all the messages and then do file -> save as. select "message source" and name the file with a .mbox extension. this is a standard .mbox file that can be used by any program.



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A script ... for those attachments...?
Authored by: aamann on Dec 13, '04 07:07:42PM
You might want to look at "Mail Scripts" for exporting Mail.app mailboxes into standard mbox files without having to go through all the manual hassle:

http://homepage.mac.com/aamann/

As a side note - you will most probably lose all status information (read, replied, ...) doing things that way. This includes the little attchment indicator in Thunderbird. It should show up again once you actually select a message in Thunderbird and it realizes that there are some attachments present. It should be possible to preserve that status information (even using AppleScript) - I will look into cooking up a little script to do so later tonight (I don't currently have access to a Mac to try things...)

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What's wrong with "drag and drop" export?
Authored by: stormy on Dec 14, '04 06:12:22PM

I always though that dragging and dropping a mail folder into the desktop created a regular mbox mailbox. Am I wrong?



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