Import Thunderbird Mails to Apple Mail

Hi,

I posted the same topic right now, and have you found the solution yet? Coz i try almost everything, and nothing seem working :( .... And thinking to stick with thunderbird for the moment

Thnks,

~kenny

I found I could transfer emails from Thunderbird on the Mac to Mac Mail as follows.

1. In Mail, use Import... Choose from Thunderbird (obviously)

2. In the dialog select the folder Library/Thunderbird/Profiles in your home folder. Mail will then come back with a list of files which it proposes to import. (I left them all checked, even the Trash, Spam etc)

3. Mail creates a folder On My Mac called Import containing the file, and confirms this.

4. Go down the directory tree until you find the emails you want to transfer. In principle you can now select them and drag them to e.g. your Inbox and Sent folders. In practice, I found that it was better to transfer no more than 500 emails at a time, because the process is quite slow without necessarily indicating when it is complete, so it looks as if only some of your emails have successfully transferred. Interrupting the process seemed to lose emails in transit. So...

5. Create some new Mailboxes On My Mac reflecting the mailbox structure you want.

6. Select the emails you want to move and drag them (no more than 500 at a time) into your newly created Mailboxes, or the Inbox and Sent trays. Wait for the transfer to complete!

7. Once you have transferred them all, select the Import folder and delete it.

Downside of all this is that all the emails come across as Unread, so you don't know which ones you have replied to.

Hope this helps.

One way - it will work. There are probably other ways.

Assuming that with Thunderbird you are keeping your mail on the local Mac - POPing your inbox and saving selected messages to a series of local folders. Assuming also that you want to use Apple Mail in the same way;

A time-consuming but reliable method would be to have an IMAP server available. In Thunderbird set up an IMAP account in addition to your POP account. Copy, rather than move, your local folders to the IMAP folder (various methods to do this, one at a time, use a temporary folder, etc). Now in Apple mail set up the same IMAP account and now you see the same IMAP messages as Thunderbird. Copy messages from the IMAP server to corresponding folders On My Mac. Of course, in the alternative, just use the IMAP server an manage the remote folders.

Note, I am NOT talking about Apple's iCloud as the IMAP server - just a regular standard IMAP-compliant server available with any decent hosting service.

By way of an example if you have a local folder called KIDS, create a folder on the IMAP server called KIDS and copy the emails in KIDS from the local folder to the IMAP server's folder. In practice I have found it is best to do no more than a few hundered at a time. with Apple Mail pointing to the same IMAP account you will see the exact same remote content as you see in Thunderbird. Copy the contents of KIDS to the same folder On My Mac.

Done.

It may only be your choice of words, but in Mail, the mailbox named Outbox does not belong to any one account. Where message that have been sent from each account are stored is called Sent or Sent Messages. and each account will have its own, and those for an IMAP will be on the server.

Ernie

Message was edited by: Ernie Stamper

RLF INT wrote:

Yea, Ernie, it is. BUT IT DOESNT WORK PROPERLY!!!!

Please read above: not all Mails are imported! And it isnt just 2 or three, its thousands missing. And yes, I tried the build in solutions of TB and Mail. And many times. I tried als well the export function via mbox Export, The build in Mail Function - the result was always the same.....

If you want to do this simply and correctly purchase Emailchemy, it can convert just about every email to every other email format. It's $30.

There is a free trial so you can check that it works.

I found this thread looking for solutions to this exact same problem. Apple Mail only imports a small fraction of the total from TB. Yes there is an option to import from TB, as the poster has made clear. It does not work.

What amazes me is some of the responses.

The OP addresses a technical issue of import/export. Not why a person should use one mail app or another. There are umpteen e-mail apps out there which functionally all do roughly the same thing, Why does anyone have to justify why they want to change mail apps? They just do for their own reasons.

My reason? I have decided I do not like TB and prefer Apple Mail. Just that simple.

This is an issue with the Apple Mail import function. Not whether or not given person prefers brand X or Y

I will venture a speculation this has to do with the way TB compacts mail. If its been compacted, it won't import.

I have been trying to figure this out as well. I am really trying to go from Outlook 2010 on XP to Mac Mail on Muntain Lion.

Tried:

eduara mailbox cleaner - NOPE - doesnt work past 10.5 and could not find similar product for MT lion

thunderbird - 1/2 way there - it imports my 20gb pst but Mac Mail doesnt import TB files correctly

emailchem - IDK yet - i am using this to go from 20gb POP to Mac Mail (this program will convert TB to mac mail as well)

emailchemy did create 20gb worth of mbox files from my pst file, i have the macbook "importing" those files now. moving like a snail.

WHY MAC MAIL DOES NOT IMPORT THUNDERBIRD:

through my research i found that there are 2 forms of email headers. obviously Apple would have Mac Mail not recognize one of the formats that many other email clients use. so when you import a folder it cant tell where an email starts or begins. - not sure why some do work though.

some people were saying if you know how to write scrips you can create something that will scan your mbox files and replace any CR with a CRLF (something along those lines) converts headers into something Mac will recognize.

i will give an update with emailchemy - im hoping it $30 well spent.

Ok but why not continue to use Thunderbird on the Mac. If you haven't guess yet Mac Mail isn't that good of an Email program. Just do a search of these forums and you will find thousands of posts about problems with Mac Mail.

This is her business account, not personal. i think her company really likes everyone using the same software to make the IT deptartments like a whole lot easier in the long run. so mac users use mac mail. pc users use outlook.

My results with emailchemy:

1) copied 20gb pst to mac, converted to mail mail = almost there, but still missing a lot of emails(all folders there). some folders ok, some missing a few emails and others missing 1,000+ emails

2) tried to use the imap feature of email chemy:

convert 20gb pst to "imap server" option

start local imap server (feature of emailchemy)

add the local server to mac mail, then let load

= missing a lot (folders and emails), even more then previous step of just converting pst to mac mail without use of imap server.

now im trying:

converting Thunderbird files to imap server

will add the files to local server and let load to see what happens.

Yep. I'm forced to move from Mac Mail because it has started embedding images into the body of the email, and the recipient can't extract them as attachments. As I work in PR, and have to send these as essential to my job, I can't be using a Mail client that won't send images as attachments that the client can't extract.

I'm having to move to Thunderbird.....

My problem is getting my old Mail emails and boxes imported into Thunderbird....

r.p.thomas wrote:

Yep. I'm forced to move from Mac Mail because it has started embedding images into the body of the email, and the recipient can't extract them as attachments.

That's a choice, you can embed or attach as you choose.