Import mailboxes from Thunderbird into Mail.app
Apr 05, '05 10:14:00AM
Contributed by: bwarrene
No formal tool exists for this that I'm aware of, but users who use Thunderbird may have a need to do this for one reason or another (as I did). I accomplished this task manually by doing the following:
- Navigate to ~/Library: Thunderbird: Profiles: your_profile: Mail: Local Folders. Identify the mailboxes you seek to use in Mail.app.
- Each mailbox has three pieces to it - i.e. inbox.sbd, inbox.msf and inbox with no extension.
- Take the file with no extension, hold down the Option key (so it also stays in the folder) and drag it to the desktop.
- Rename this copy with .mbox as the file extension. For example, inbox becomes inbox.mbox.
- Open Mail.app and select File: Import, choose Other, and navigate to the desktop and click Choose. Choose the file you just renamed. Your mailbox(es) should appear in the import window and will import into Mail.app.
[robg adds: This earlier hint provided a script to clean up Mozilla Mail's files for import to Mail. This is apparently due to a problem with Mail's handling of whitespace (according to the posted comments). Since Thunderbird is evolved from Mozilla Mail, there may be a similar issue with importing some mboxes. If you have issues, you might want to try the script from the previous hint...]
Comments (28)
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050402143519725