10.5: Make Spotlight index Thunderbird 2.0 messages
Sep 29, '08 07:30:00AM
Contributed by: bgrieder
After some work, I finally managed to get Thunderbird 2.0 and Leopard's Spotlight working together -- at least it is good enough for me, but it is still far from the kind of integration you get between Mail.app and Spotlight.
Here are the numerous steps I took to get it working (I use two GMail accounts managed via IMAP):
- Download the Thunderbird.mdimporter. Double-clicking on it should install it in /Library » Spotlight.
- In Thunderbird, open Preferences » Advanced » General » Configuration Editor. Set mail.spotlight.enable to true.
- Reboot your Mac and verify that the Thunderbird.mdimporter is registered by checking the output of /usr/bin/mdimport -L in Terminal.
- Create a Thunderbird.emails directory in your user's Documents folder.
- Make sure Thunderbird is not running, then copy the ~/Library » Thunderbird » files » xxx.default » ImapMail directory into your newly-created Thunderbird.emails directory. If you are adventurous and short on disk space, you cant try a move instead of a copy, but you are on your own ... and no, a symbolic link does not do the job.
- Kill the network, start Thunderbird, and go to Account Preferences. For each account, change the Local Folder setting under Server Setting to point to the new corresponding directory under ~/Documents » Thunderbird.emails » ImapMail.
- Restart Thunderbird, start the network, and make sure everything is working. If it is, delete the ~/Library » Thunderbird » files » xxx.default » ImapMail directory.
Spotlight searches should now return your emails, and they'll show up in the Documents category.
Notes:
- Generation of .mozeml files by Thunderbird takes a very long time, and follows its own logic. Be patient. You can check the live progress of their creation by typing mozeml in the search box of the Spotlight window.
- Generating those mozeml files defeats the purpose of IMAP if you use IMAP to avoid a local copy of your emails.
- Generating those mozeml files significantly increases the hard drive space requirements for Thunderbird -- each mozeml file is at least 4KB in size, and some are eight times that size.
[robg adds: I haven't tested this one.]
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