Importing mail from Seamonkey

Question

Importing mail from Seamonkey

Anyone have experience with importing mailbox contents from Seamonkey into Apple Mail? I've been trying to use the import function, specifying Netscape/Mozilla as the mail source. It looks like Seamonkey's database format has evolved since Mozilla, and the import function is picking up a few messages, and is then losing synch with the message boundaries and inhaling the remainder of the database as a single message. Things go downhill from there.

I realize I'm running old software here and may need to upgrade. Has anyone successfully imported mail from a current Seamonkey version into some version of Apple Mail?

Thanx - Andy

PowerMac G5 dual 2.5, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Oct 8, 2009 10:29 AM

Reply

Answer 1

BDAqua

Level 10

238,991 points

Oct 8, 2009 11:57 AM in response to Andy Goldstein1

Andy, do you have Import/Export Tools in SeaMonkey?

http://www.nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html

If so I'd Export from SM first for a try, but I'm suspecting there might be some corruption.

Reply

Answer 2

Oct 8, 2009 3:28 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanx very much for the link. I wasn't aware of these tools - I'll give them a shot and see if I can make something work. So far I'd been just trying to use Apple Mail's import function to directly read Seamonkey's mail files. Being back on Tiger here, my Apple Mail version is kind of gray and fuzzy. So if there's been any change in the mail file format from the old Mozilla I could see where there might be problems.

I don't think my mail files are corrupted. There's been no misbehavior in Seamonkey. I tried the import a good half dozen times. First time around I found Mail importing all my old deleted messages. So I went back to Seamonkey and emptied the wastebasket (which I hadn't done in a while), and tried again, and it still imported all the deleted messages. Then I moved the entire inbox to a new mail folder, then tried compacting the mail files, and this is where things really started going downhill. I finally just put everything back where it belonged and it all still works in Seamonkey. (BTW, I also made a copy of the entire Mozilla mail folder before I started all the shenanigans, just in case.) I suspect if I can get the current folder contents reloaded into a new set of mail files Apple Mail's import will probably read them OK.

The reason I'm looking to move off Seamonkey is I'm fed up with its browser performance. I'm getting multi-second delays in response to basic stuff like scrolling a window and clicking links, where Safari responds instantly on the same material. (And this machine is no slouch - 2.5GHz G5 dual with 3.5GB RAM.)

Cheers - Andy

Reply