[CentOS] OT: Migration from Evolution to Thunderbird (Thunderbird mbox files)

Thu Sep 4 15:04:52 UTC 2008
Lanny Marcus <lmmailinglists at gmail.com>

mouss wrote:
> Lanny Marcus wrote:
<snip>
>> The Thunderbird documentation says that it uses mbox files, but if so, 
>> where_are_they? Here's what it says:
>>
>>> http://www.mozilla.org/support/thunderbird/faq#import
<snip>
>>> (Inbox, Sent, etc.) is stored as two files — one with no extension 
>>> (e.g. INBOX), which is the mail file itself (in "mbox" format), and 
>>> one with an .msf extension (e.g. INBOX.msf), which is the index (Mail 
>>> Summary File) to the mail file. Tell the other program to import mail 
>>> from the file with no extension.
<snip>
>>
>> and I cannot find the mbox files....
<snip>
>>
>> If someone on the list can point me to where the mbox files for 
>> Thunderbird on Linux are located, that will be much appreciated. I do 
>> not want to migrate from Evolution to Thunderbird, unless my email 
>> will continue to be in the mbox format, in case I eventually decide to 
>> migrate from Thunderbird, to another MUA. TIA!
> 
> look under $HOME/.mozilla* (if you see a funny dirname, that name is a 
> profile id. chdir to ...).

The data for Firefox is located in .mozilla     The mbox files for 
Thunderbird are supposed to be in .thunderbird but I cannot find them there.

> The simplest way to migrate is to setup a local IMAP server, create an 
> account on both evolution and TB. then copy your old mail to the imap 
> server from one mailer, and get it from imap to the second mailer. may 
> take time if you have a large mailbox, but this way you don't have to 
> convert files (or even find them).

My email is on gmail.com  IMAP and yes, I could start over with 
Thunderbird by downloading everything into Thunderbird from the IMAP 
server.

The problem is that if I ever want to migrate from Thunderbird, I want 
to be sure that I know where the mbox files are located and at this 
time, I cannot find the mbox files.

The documentation on the Thunderbird support site is not showing what I 
am seeing on my Desktop box. Possibly I should post this on a 
Thunderbird mailing list, because their documentation shows something 
that is not correct?