Migrating to Mail from Thunderbird

[doopsie]

Hey guys,

I've recently installed leopard on my macbook and I'd like to migrate from thunderbird to mail so that my contacts and all can be synced from one application to another. That's the beauty of mac osx afterall.

Alright, So I launched mail, clicked import from thunderbird and everything seemed to be running smoothly and when all my mails finished importing, I did a quick check on the mails and.. wtf? The mails weren't properly sorted into the different folders and I had tons of mail missing! Does anyone here have any experience with migrating from thunderbird to mail and faced these problems during their migration? If I did it manually, would it be better? Kindly advise.

Secondly, I used to run filters on my mail such that my mail will get sorted out into different folders. It's really handy because it keeps my mails organised and stuff. How does mail do this? Is it the smart mailbox that I see?

I'm using POP just in case you wanted to know. Thanks for any help in advance, this migration to mail, if successful, will make my mac experience very memorable.

 

[yetanotherdave]

You can use smart mailboxes, you can also set up rules to move mail about from one folder to another in preferences-> rules

 

[doopsie]

so rules move my messages, while smart mailbox keeps the messages in my main mailbox but shows them under smartmailbox?

Thanks, i'd prefer rules that way.

What about my migration problem? any idea?

 

[doopsie]

Sorry, does anybody have any idea on this?

 

[yetanotherdave]

so rules move my messages, while smart mailbox keeps the messages in my main mailbox but shows them under smartmailbox?

Thanks, i'd prefer rules that way.

What about my migration problem? any idea?

Yes, smartt mailboxes is like smart playlists in iTunes, or smart folders, where rules actually moves the messages.

I have never migrated mail from thunderbird to mail. If you're getting it from a pop3 account and it's all still online it might be easier to re-download it all.

 

[liverbomb88]

Migration: Make sure you are selecting the right Thunderbird directory for mail migration. Go into Thunderbird, into accounts, and find out the directory for your pop account. Quit Thunderbird. In Mail, start import from that directory. It should migrate all of your messages and the folders. You may need to rename some of the folders, as they may migrate over with a .sbe extension.

Filtering: Rules work well.

 

[leobesus]

Migrating to Mail from Thunderbird

I have the same problem too. My last try was yesterday, and i'm really sure that I selected the right directory, but still had tons of mail missing. I did some check, and i found that there's no newer mails received later than july 2008.

I hope you can get what i mean since my english is so bad.


Rgds,
Leo
Indonesia

 

[srp46]

Migration

I had the same problem - new Mac user moving from WIN XP TBird. Liverbomb88's instructions worked perfectly for me - thanks! It did put the old email in their correct folders (mailboxes) under a folder called "Import", but that's fine for now. Thanks!