[vox-tech] Email

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Richard Harke (paleopenguin at gmail.com):

> I did install Thunderbird (icedove) but I'm stuck ay impoting my
> existing emails. I created a folder to match one from kmailm planning
> to import one folder at a time.

I believe you mistyped 'Ah, thank you for calling attention to my
omitting any coherent details of what format my "old email" is currently
in.  It's trapped inside whatever datastore KMail [you supply version]
uses.'

(Hint, hint.)


One issue is that KMail used a number of storage formats over time,
sometimes offering a couple as options.  Here is an article that
describes a user of KMail 2.x (from KDE 4.7.2) getting out of KMail to
Thunderbird with his mail intact:

http://www.ulduzsoft.com/2012/01/from-kmail-to-thunderbird/

(Author 'George' doesn't like the default mbox format used by
Thunderbird, so configures Thunderbird to use Maildir instead.)

One obvious workaround irrespective of KMail's storage format -- usable
_if_ KMail is working well enough to sync to remote mail servers --
would be to sync KMail's local folders to a remote IMAP server, and then 
IMAP-sync that same mail downwards (the other direction) into
Thunderbird.

For extra credit and vastly greater speed, do this via an IMAP daemon 
(such as Dovecot) and MTA (such as Exim/Postfix) that you run locally on
you Linux host.  But that might be more setup than you care to take on.

Tip:  On general grounds, you'll want this extension for Thunderbird:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/
It makes bulk-importing of mbox-formatted mail files more human-friendly
than without the extension.  The extension does not, however, natively
understand any other file formats (e.g., Maildir).